McGee doesn’t live here, so the space in the corner of the study is Joan’s closet, not McGee’s!
Joan often thought of categorizing, in a notebook, all the stuff caged in that closet, but she would need another closet to store the endless notebooks in. She had once thought that, in looking over everything she’d squirreled away, in order to record it, she would be strong-willed enough to eliminate many items from the well-stocked shelves of beat-up treasure-filled boxes and bins. However, belongings securely glued to one’s emotions aren’t easy to eliminate so she dropped that word from her vocabulary.
Endlessly fascinated, she couldn’t resist hauling out newspapers and magazine clippings, brief cases full of articles and memory boxes full of sentimental writings along with other treasures too numerous to display, not to mention keep dusted. The last time she unraveled mounds of memorabilia from her closet, she realized why it remained. It all conjured visions of simpler, loving times. A lot of old things including oddities, scrapbooks, damaged, out-dated and unused items, even unidentifiable objects, once had a life… and she remembered.
Justifying her decision to keep everything, she closed the closet door sighing, I only hope as I age, somebody will keep me around, come by to rummage through my history, unearth an era and not only learn who I was but who I still am… and, perhaps, be assured that in jogging the best memories, this old caged bird still belongs.