Traveling exhibits of our past

“With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.” When those old fashioned words were spoken at our wedding ceremony, our combined possessions pretty much fit into my husband’s little Mazda truck and my ’65 Mustang coupe.

Last month, just weeks before our 26th anniversary, two moving trucks arrived at our house. Looking at the many crates about to be unloaded, I said to my husband, “There are those worldly goods we were talking about.”

There are five of us now, but our increased possessions seem disproportionate to our population growth. Nothing brings this home more than unpacking and putting away the accumulation of nearly three decades of marriage, family and travel.

The frequent moves of military life keep us well acquainted with the extent of our acquisitions.

We unpack every box every time, forcing ourselves to face the stockpile, to re-evaluate what we have and why we still have it.

It’s a blessing and curse of military life that I have to wonder whether I should keep precious kindergarten drawings, maps of cities we’ve visited, programs from school plays, many items of no value beyond sentimental. If we didn’t transport them so often, I’d save them without question; the downside being that I might end up on one of those housecleaning intervention shows on TV.

“Mom, do you want to keep this?” I look up from unpacking a box of dishes to see what my youngest is holding. A nametag sticker my husband wore when we took our oldest son to college orientation his freshman year.

Well, my husband never actually wore it. I wrote his name on it, but it ended up in my purse rather than on his lapel. It traveled back to Germany with us after we left our son in Texas. I put it in his room — full of his things but empty of him. I couldn’t throw it away then. It returned to the States on this move and turned up on the floor during unpacking. A piece of my life to look at and evaluate: trash or treasure?

“So, can I throw it away?” my son asks, tired of waiting while I deliberate the fate of this tiny scrap of the past.

“Yes,” I answer. It’s not like I’m going to forget that day without the name tag. The same could be said of most souvenirs, but I’m a tactile person. Also, I don’t trust my aging brain as the sole repository of our history.

If we did not have to watch strangers box up our possessions every few years; if we did not later unpack it all piece by piece; if we did not have to know, by the crate and to the pound, exactly how much furniture, clothing, linens, pots, pans and kitsch we use to re-create our family nest — would we need to evaluate everything we save?

Before every move we clean out, weed out, give away and throw away. After unpacking, we do it all again. A pile of boxes and bags by our new front door awaits the donation truck, mostly clothing, kitchenware and small appliances. The practical stuff I can evaluate objectively. It’s the sentimental stuff I can’t seem to let go.

We have dozens of photo albums and scrapbooks and the materials to create more. Other items can’t be confined to a page: clay creations made by little hands, board books imprinted by baby teeth. Moving makes me ask myself why I keep these things. Looking at them each time we move reminds me why I do.

Maybe some day we’ll have an attic, a museum for these remnants of our family history, where they can gather dust, not inventory stickers. Maybe my grown children and grandchildren will wander through the tangible remains of their childhood, saying, “Remember that day?” “Oh, this was a great costume” or “Look, this was my favorite book!”

Until then, I guess we’ll keep them as a traveling exhibit, one that we revisit with every move. What could be more fitting for a military family?

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