What to Do With These Tickets?

What should I do with these:

when I don’t keep one of these anymore?


I used to be such a faithful journal writer. Now, I blog. I still keep a journal of sorts — I write down snippets and ideas of things I want to blog about. But when I look back at these entries, they don’t tell a story. I have to read my blog to get the whole story, which requires a computer and internet access.

As I was flipping through my journals tonight, I found not only tickets to plays and movies, but cards from bouquets of flowers I received from Ed, little notes from a friend, and special emails I printed to stick into the pages of my journal. I love those little artifacts, these little scraps of memories.

See the pinkish ticket in the journal above? I wrote in that journal that I had gone to see my mom sing in the chorus of a local production of Don Giovanni. I had completely forgotten she was in that opera. I remember going with Mom to auditions to give her support, attending the concerts she sang in, and listening to her sing in church. I can remember exactly how she sounded when she sang a solo at the late service every year on Christmas Eve. But I had forgotten about Don Giovanni.

I think these tickets are a sign…a sign that I need to continue my last journal where I left off, to write down with pen and paper little events like these. Little events that may not seem that important right now, but might mean the world to me in years to come. Little events, like hearing my mom sing ten years ago, in a little opera house in the Midwest.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving used to be a huge gathering of family members on my dad’s side. Our Thanksgiving Day, however, was never on Thanksgiving Day. We would meet for Thanksgiving on Friday instead. My dad and three of my uncles were pastors, and so they would have church services at their respective churches, and then we would spend the rest of the day traveling to whichever aunt and uncle were hosting that year.

We loved spending time with all our cousins. Here is a memory from my sister about one Thanksgiving: “…some of the older cousins were in the basement playing Planet of the Apes, and they kept turning the lights off, which I didn’t like – too scary! – so I must have been pretty young.”

This Thanksgiving, as you can imagine, wasn’t the happiest for our family. The visitation for my mom was Friday, the same day we used to meet for a huge turkey dinner. Several of my cousins came to Iowa from far away, and I was so happy to see them. We gathered together to thank God for my mom, their aunt. And I know that those cousins who couldn’t make it were wishing they could come. I’m so grateful for my aunt, my uncles and my cousins, from both sides of my family. I’ll tell you more about them another day.