Musings, Continued

Oooh. Emo in the morning light. I usually suffer from Rose-colored Glasses Syndrome till I've "sobered up," so-to-speak, but I've been told by multiple friends to stand by my emo, so I shall. I was not a little teary-eyed when I wrote that post.

I spent about an hour last night with my dad going through a treasure trove of miscellaneous papers from 20-30 years ago. There were moving inventories, retirement plan summaries from when dad took a job in 1984, height/weight checks for newborn daughters (I was invariably in the 10th percentile for height, 5th for weight), receipts for c-sections at hospitals... There were letters from friends of decades ago referring to then-future events that are now far, far in the past. A sale contract for my dad's Alfa Romeo, which he sold when he was 26, just before he was married... Younger than I.

When my mother wrote that note to herself about neurologist appointments and addresses and things to do before moving, she didn't know that her then-youngest daughter would soon be deathly ill, she didn't know that she'd shortly be giving birth to a miracle child. As she doodled, it never entered her mind that, 25 years later, her excessively sentimental oldest daughter would behold that yellowed sheet and play connect-the-dots across time.

I feel like I should be in a hurry to do something, to accomplish something, to go through a metamorphosis, to get to the next chapter...! I need to do things that leave behind such fascinating detritus, this litter that waits and ages and matures and is woven deeper into the fabric of so many people's lives as it sits in a forgotten box in an attic, like the striations of rock and sediment and organic matter of the earth wait for millenia for us to puzzle out their histories and marvel.

The thought that there are mysteries waiting undisturbed for us to discover while time brings people and events into position and perspective... Thrills me.

Ah, it's so beautiful.