My mom is cleaning out her storage room. The memories came rushing back as I saw old items that meant so much to me over the years, ones I had forgotten all about. Even the smell of things like an old Strawberry Shortcake toy threw me back, it was almost like an acid flashback, I was little again, safe, happy and with my whole life ahead of me.
The photo album with my dad, all young, long haired and bearded, my grandpa and him fishing off the dock at some lake or other. Gramps was wearing one of his classic macks, with the weird blue and red squares patters you don’t see anymore. I think I might even have it in the closet of my old room to this day. I kept his robe that had his name written on the tag because he had had a stroke and was in a home for brain damaged elderly people, not that he was that old mind you. That was probably not long after these pictures were taken.
After his stroke he went back and forth between being not really there to thinking he was still a child. I remember going to visit him in the home once and he thought I was his little sister. He gave me a pink fluffy puppet with googly eyes that I am not sure if he made or bought in a shop at the hospital. It was cute, simple and I was going to keep it for the rest of my life and I would have if a girl who lived next door had not stolen it from me. I never saw it again. I know she took it but she never admitted it.
There was a square black wooden box with the silver chinese style dragon on it that I had declared mine when I was young. It was originally my moms but she let me have it, she saw how much I loved it and I used it for little nickknacks, love notes and such for years and years. Now I have it again to do the same.
There was even an old box of Christmas ornaments. Not the fancy kind we have now. Lots of them were made of styrofoam balls wrapped in silky threads, around and around like an elegant ball of yarn. Anyone else remember those? They aren’t as “pretty” as many of the ones I own now but I took a bunch to put on my tree, some other ones that brought back memories too, my mom doesn’t even put up a tree herself these days anyway, I go over and set hers up and she has plenty more decorations, so we share these.
