Purging the Stuff, Not the Memories

I’ve come across some cool stuff while going through all these boxes from my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.

I discovered my Cabbage Patch Kids (and almost immediately found new homes for them), some old Legos, and the very first Fossil watch I ever owned (which is unfortunately all corroded from leaving a spent battery in it for too many years).

I have already warned my boyfriend about the forthcoming Beanie Babies. I have a huge box stuffed full of nothing but Beanie Babies. I can’t wait to give those suckers away to good homes.

(Just as soon as I find them.)

So, last night, I came across a box that had a bunch of notebooks and folders from college. One of the folders was a packet from the Alpha Phi Omega national convention in 1996, which was held in Phoenix, Arizona.

Inside the packet, I came across a huge collection of folded pieces of paper.

I was utterly confused.

I began unfolding the papers and reading their contents. I read paper after paper, until finally, it hit me.

Suddenly, a wave of memory hit me as the whole 1996 convention flashed back into my mind. I read every single note and laughed. Some of them were inside jokes I’ve long since forgotten. Some were from people I still remember, and other notes just struck me as peculiarly funny.

A few of the notes contained pleas to buy t-shirts like what we were wearing (the front of the shirt said, “We do service, what the hell do you do?”)

And a lot of the notes discussed party logistics, because, let’s face it—if you’re a college kid going to a decent hotel with 1500 other college kids from all across the country… there will be parties. 

Good parties.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading those notes and strolling down that long and twisted lane of memories. Those notes even jogged my memory on some of the details of parliamentary procedure (sometimes called Robert’s Rules of Order).

I was one of the voting delegates, which means I had the honor of sitting on the legislation floor, along with over 200 other chapters from across the country.

So as voting delegates, we could not randomly get up and walk around, we had to wait for breaks. If we needed something, we used a runner to pass a note to the peanut gallery, asking someone out there to go get us whatever we needed.

For those not familiar with parliamentary procedure, the peanut gallery is the space behind delegate seats where the general public can listen in. If anyone in the peanut gallery had strong opinions about legislation on the floor, they could send a note to their delegates. Sort of like real-time lobbying.

Any delegate could also pass notes to another delegate on the voting floor.

Are you getting this picture?

Imagine a bunch of college kids sitting in a giant hotel ball room, with runners constantly on the move, passing notes, t-shirts, money, sodas, snacks, and whatever else amongst the peanut gallery and delegates.

It was actually pretty cool, but it did get boring to sit there all day if the legislation you cared about had come and gone.

I loved coming across those notes and having that sudden flash of memory.

I also threw the notes away, along with all the other accoutrements from that convention.

(Go me!)

I’ll never forget how important Alpha Phi Omega was to me. It gave me a sense of purpose, back when I didn’t feel I had one. My favorite role was liaising with other chapters and building the connection between our chapter at Vanderbilt and other chapters at schools in our region.

APO was so important to me that I became a life member during my senior year in college. I was also awarded a Distinguished Service Key, which is the highest honor a chapter can give a member. It's given for outstanding service to the fraternity. 

I’ve done absolutely nothing with APO since those days, but through that co-ed service fraternity, I found my friends and a sense of purpose. I learned and then taught leadership skills. I learned the depth of value of community service, and I learned that one person really can make a difference. I even organized an entire weekend convention, including presenters and a whole host of other tiny little details. It nearly broke me, but it’s one of the best experiences I ever had back in those days, because it showed me a glimpse of what I was (and am) really made of.

(And it's not completely out of place to mention that the theme for that conference's t-shirt was, "You'll love the stuff we're made of." Yes. We stole the Pizza Hut tag line from those days... oops.)

I’ll always have these memories. And now that I’m finally going through all of this crap and throwing it away, I can record the memories in my own way, so I won’t forget them again. It's refreshing to finally understand that I don't need to hang on to all of this stuff as physical representation of the memories. 

I have to say that although this cleansing and letting go process is not easy… it's not all bad, either.

Nostalgia in a Wine Bottle

I remember drinking this bottle of wine.

It was 1998, and I was living in Philadelphia, with 7 other people in an old house. A couple lived in the basement, I shared a room on the first floor with a guy who was only there for another month, a guy and another girl had their own rooms on the second floor, and two more guys had their own rooms on the top floor.

One of the guys had this bottle of wine that he’d been waiting for an occasion to drink.

It was my first time to have red wine, and my first weekend living in Philadelphia, and that was occasion enough.

I took a sip and liked it immediately. As it turns out, only I and my roommate liked it. So, he and I split the bottle. That was an interesting night, for sure…

I have a lot of stories I could share about that house, that arrangement, and those days in general, but I’m hanging onto those for my memoir.

(You know, the memoir I’ll write some day.)

I’d completely forgotten that I’d kept this bottle until I was unpacking my apartment back in March.

I of course drink red wine on a regular basis, these days. Oddly enough, the type I always gravitate to is… pinot noir from Sonoma. I thought nothing of it when I took up drinking wine a couple of years ago, and I certainly did not recall this bottle from my first taste of red, back in 1998.

Imagine my surprise when I cracked open the box containing this bottle, as I sipped some La Crema pinot noir (which is of course, from Sonoma), and I came across this Quatro bottle.

It’s interesting how we so often forget the origins of the fibers of our being...

Note: The beautiful, handmade leather journals in the background of this photo are from Mind's Eye Journals. Check out Teresa's Facebook page to see her latest designs... you will be amazed with her work!

Bright Blue Uncomplicated Weather

It’s so hard, on a beautiful day like this, not to wish my desk were outside. I’d like to bathe in this glorious sunshine, with the trees swaying back and forth to show off their lovely array of colors and rustling just enough to push my mind into a vortex of days on Alumni Lawn, skipping classes, watching strangers and friends play Frisbee, lounge on blankets, read books, or nap.

I long for those days sometimes. In many ways, life was simpler. I didn’t have so many responsibilities. I didn’t have so many things to worry about. I didn’t have so many obligations pulling me in so many directions. I didn’t have to work so hard to stay in shape. I didn’t have to worry so much about what I ate or shouldn’t eat or did eat.

And yet, if my soul could have been as happy and healthy as I feel now… I’d never have wanted to leave that time. I might have become the Joey Greene of the mid-90s.

Joey Greene was a 7^th year student when I was a freshman. He’d hemmed and hawed so damn long that people came to see him as an institution on campus. He was the first person to get to know as many freshmen as possible, and he made it his personal mission to know as many undergrads as possible. He showed us around campus. He avoided questions about why he’d been there so long. He loved school that much, and his parents indulged his avoidance of the ominous real world.

I get what he was going through, though. Even when I did graduate, I wasn’t ready for the real world. I put it off as long as I could, and even longer.

I think the reality is… I suddenly realized how great it could be to be a kid, and I didn’t want to grow up.

I look back on those days with deep fondness and appreciation. I have precious memories of blissful moments, and over time, those far outshine the darkness—which is good, because in those days it was vast and overwhelmingly deep.

But on days like today, I think of little else but leaning against a fat-trunked Magnolia tree, daydreaming about whatever boy I had a crush on at the moment, pretending to read whatever text I was supposed to have already read.

And I realized something: college taught me the value of living in the moment.

A priceless gift, indeed…