I believe Dad enjoyed his birthday very much. He received numerous cards and phone calls. Ron, David, and I took him out for lunch and then went back home to visit. Dad and David both talked about their wartime experiences, and I brought down their uniforms that Mom kept nicely under plastic in an upstairs closet. We also found a box of some of Dad's WWII artifacts. This was a time in his life before he had started dating Mom. Dad was honorably discharged in April of 1945 and took Mom on their first date to the Butler County Fair in August. Something else we found up in that closet was a box of old, old makeup w/ powder, lipstick, rouge, etc. I'd seen it before but had forgotten its significance. Dad reminded me that this was the first Christmas present he gave Mom when they were dating. Mom kept the object of that memory for 64 years.
Mom was the kind of homemaker who cleaned closets at least once a year. For the big, walk-in closet upstairs this meant hauling everything out, wiping down the walls and shelves, mopping the floor, and putting everything back. Occasionally she would throw things away, but Mom had a difficult time throwing things away b/c every THING held a memory. I think many times we use objects to remind us of past events, but all those objects take up a lot of space over the years. I'm at a point in my life where I'm realizing those objects won't be around forever, or at least I've reached an age where I'm realizing it's not possible. Mom was the keep of my memories for 45 years, and within the next several years there will probably no longer be a house for those memories. Every so often I need to pull out those memories from the closet, now more than ever, so I can remember the object that holds the key to the memory. Each time I return to the home of my youth, I pull out a few more objects and repeat previous objects so the memories will be saved in my mind's hard drive.
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