The Memory Box

At night, we've got a gorgeous tree.

During the day, it looks a little outrageous. Like a yard sale.

Cluttered with a ridiculous number of ornaments that have no rhyme or reason to the outsider looking in.

BK breezed into town for 24 hours. (That frequent flier owns more miles than Delta.) While she was here she introduced me to a new way of looking at old things.

The Memory Box, she says, requires you to file things away under good or bad and that's how we'll remember them from here on out.

Like when we braved heat, humidity and scary power tools.

Or, our bike trip earlier this year. No one thought we'd make it through that one alive. (Me, included.) But, we did. And, several months later when my muscles stopped hurting, I forgot all about the downside to peddling uphill for 200 miles.

I've never seen her happier, and since happiness is infectious, a little bit of her charm rubbed off onto me.

It got me thinking about how we all have a memory box, or two. The sweetest is no doubt the one filled with treasures we haul out every Christmas to hang on the tree.

Ornaments hold all sorts of special memories ~ places we've been, people we knew and the people we used to be, way back when we decided to buy them.

An ornament for every year. Commemorating life's adventures, big & small...

When we learned how to fish and skate and ski.


When we saved up our pennies. And, visited places far, far away.




When I moonlighted.

As a bartender!

To afford the cottage...

Where I could garden...

And, ride horses....

Forever and a day....