Holding onto History

As a TCK, I am predisposed to certain tendencies. I could never be a hoarder. I can’t be weighed down by too many things. I feel the need every so often to go through my stuff and toss. Often indiscriminately. My wife has to go behind me and rescue things she knows I will want later. At the same time, I am a bit of a pack rat. I hold onto things that have sentimental associations or that connect me to people or places I have known. I don’t have a huge collection of all the newspapers or magazines I have ever bought, but I do have all four papers from the days my children were born. It will be up to them to decide if that slice of history is something they will want to keep or not, but for now I hold on to such things.

I am like the curator of the museum of my life and memories.

Just about every year on this day, November 9, I regret the loss of a couple items of my collection. I have no idea what happened to them. For years, through every move and all my wanderings, I held onto a copy of Newsweek and one of Time from the week that the Berlin Wall fell. I knew at the time as a teen that this was a monumental, world changing event. I knew I would want to have this piece of historical record. Back then, I had no clue that I would someday live in that very part of the world.

Of course, these days you can find all of that digitally. There is even a digital museum with much more detail and insight available than a mere magazine from the day could ever provide. Somehow, though, those magazines felt more real.