I often catch flak for my tendency to save things: ticket stubs, college textbooks, the notebook from the time I was scheduled to interview Hillary Clinton but she canceled.
What my family fails to remember is when the tumble of bins and boxes in the basement and the storage facility pays off — not by way of money, as in all those Beanie Babies that were a fortune waiting to happen, but by way of memories.
But then sometimes it happens: Old elementary school papers happened upon while looking for the Thanksgiving linens elicit an excited flurry of “I remember this!” And the chosen one sits down to a boxful of remembering. A stack of Page 1-A newspaper clippings from my reporter days garners me bragging rights before my attentive children. The costume jewelry I come across of my grandmother’s reminds me to tell my children of their great-grandmother’s bygone days.
