Savers of
I spent all day yesterday in my attic . I labored for hours packing Easter decorations , stacking items collected over a lifetime to the rafters . I was especially nostalgic this year , taking care to pack carefully in case someone else had to unpack it the next time . Wrapping each ceramic rabbit and chick tenderly , tucking the fluffy wings perfectly in the tissue . I wasn ’ t being morbid , just wondering how many more trips I could make up those fold-down attic stairs . This isn ’ t valuable high dollar stuff we ’ re talking here , just a mother ’ s memories . Little handprints on brightly colored construction paper fashioned to look like ducks and signed in crooked block letters .
Saving all these things comes naturally to me . My grandmother , a true pack-rat , saved everything - string , marbles , rusty nuts and bolts , and chipped China cups . I once found fourteen turkey wishbones in a butter container tucked away in her kitchen cabinet . I asked her why she was keeping them and she replied that she ’ d read in Heloise ’ s column that if you polished them they looked pretty on packages tied with ribbon . There were old brown glass apothecary bottles , and lots of cobalt blue ones that she kept in a sunny west window , and a drawer filled with every key she ’ d ever used , the locks long forgotten .
Her attic was a depository of cast off items for the entire family ; old hats , boxes of mismatched gloves and out of date shoes . It was the perfect place for playing dress-up on rainy days . Hers wasn ’ t a cramped gable attic like mine . It consisted of a couple of rustic rooms with unfinished floors and walls where my mother and her sisters slept when they were young . There were boxes of romantic letters from far away places written by boys in World War II , letter sweaters and tons of old black and white pictures of girls in long straight skirts and bobby socks , their lips dark with heavy lipstick .
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