Shredding the Past Away

Even though Christmas was different at our house on the year without a Christmas tree, we still had a joyous time. Of all the practical gifts available in this world, my husband gave me a stackable washer/dryer. I countered and one-upped him with a paper shredder. Yep, romance sort of took second place...sort of. Read on!

There's a story behind this shredder. Stay with me here.

For years we have told each other that we needed to move the washer/dryer upstairs to the main floor, but we never actually did it. Instead, we dutifully walked up and down the steps to do the laundry in the basement. Nine months pregnant? I walked around outside in the rain to get to the basement carrying a basket of clothes on my hip. Those were the days, my friend!

I thought they'd never end. Up, down, carefully holding to the banister, watching not to trip over the dog, pulling the door at the top of the stairs shut so the cat couldn't get downstairs. And repeating all this to search for that one stray sock that just didn't make it back upstairs. 

Until...back in September, I broke my leg. Those days had to end, my friend. We knew the day would come, yet we didn't expect it to happen so fast. 

We called a contractor for advice and we started the process. Our four-bedroom home is now a three-bedroom home with a laundry room on the main floor. Yippeeee! It all sounds so easy now that we are nearly finished, but let me tell you it wasn't. And that's where the paper shredder comes in.

This fourth bedroom turned laundry room happened to be filled with all kinds of boxes and bags and crates of accumulated married-life junk. Before the contractor could even start, we had to clear out the room completely, no small task. Our very lives unfolded before our eyes. Since we hadn't moved from the house for over fifty years, the piles astonished us with odds and ends of memories.

One thing in the piles was a box of letters, not just any letters, but letters to me from my husband back when he was a student at Wingate Junior College and I was a student at Appalachian State Teacher's College. Yes, we're that old because both schools are now universities. We had just started dating and the letters were filled with cute comments about love and life that we have no intention of their ever seeing the light of day to anyone but us, especially not our children who will be the ones to clean out this mess once we kick the bucket.

So I bought a paper shredder and a bottle of wine, and on Christmas Day we opened the box. We spent the afternoon reading letters aloud to each other, laughing at how immature we were and tearing up as we read about boys on his dorm hall being called up to the draft and VietNam. We time-traveled by the songs of the sixties that he mentioned in his letters and the movies he wrote about that we had long since forgotten. Many of the people he mentioned are no longer living, but they came alive in his descriptions of their corporate antics as college sophomores. 

We did save a few select letters that show our children how much of a true romance we had, but the rest are gone. No regrets. 

Mainly because then the contractor started.

A glance at the room during construction

This week, the washer was installed. 

It's not all that great a picture, but I'm in love with it, and with the man who gifted it to me (to us really) for Christmas. We have a few things to tweak in the room, but we're already using this new blessing. 

It's a wonderful life!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen