Moving Memories of Moving Memories

So much of our lives is packed in boxes, kept out of sight and buried deep in our closets.

Sounds like something Dr. Phil might say, doesn’t it?

TV’s pseudo-shrink may be smarter than he looks. I’ve been packing boxes for the last couple of weeks while getting ready to move, and it’s amazing how much I’d forgotten about myself.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that, at various times in my life, I was almost interesting.

I came upon a 1986 clipping from a Denver weekly newspaper that wrote about an assignment that sent me to Peru with an archeological team in search of a “Lost City of the Incas.” The article detailed a fistfight I almost had with another reporter over using the shortwave radio. The article quoted colleagues as later referring to me as “Ramar of the Jungle.”

I’d forgotten that. It sounded good. I’m keeping it.

As with that forgotten item, the reminders flow from photos and books and letters and mementos -- the kind of things that matter greatly at the time but, after being relegated to storage, begin to slip away from you.

And if, like me, you haven’t moved for 17 years, they practically disappear.

Now I’m sorting through them, deciding what stays and goes. I’m committed to traveling light, which means that parts of my so-called life are on the chopping block.

Dozens of books are getting the heave-ho. Twenty-five years ago, at a moment of particular turmoil, my sister gave me “The Hazards of Being Male.” Now fully aware of those hazards, I’m giving the book to charity. The same goes for “Being Homosexual,” which I bought years ago for research purposes but will now donate, if only to stop guests from asking so many questions.

I’m keeping the various rewrites of a TV movie I tried to sell in 1987. The screenplay got close, but no cigar. It’s been years since I’d seen the letter from an agent detailing how many places she’d pitched it. That stays.

Dumped, however, are hundreds of clippings from my first newspaper job. Kept for 30 years, now suddenly gone.

I came upon letters I hadn’t seen in years from my dad and my aunt, both dead. I forgot how good Dad’s handwriting was and how he called me “Champ.” My aunt’s letter, written in 1990, lamented the University of Nebraska football team’s subpar passing attack. Both letters stay.

Charity got my jigsaw puzzles. Already I regret that, because I remembered belatedly that one was a Christmas present 10 years ago from my mother. Rats, should have kept it.

My turntable and all four boxes of 45 rpm records stay. Explain to me, then, why I’m giving away 30 albums and keeping only a few others for nostalgia?

Two Bibles stay. One is a white zippered one I got when I was 7, and the other is a big black one that my grandma had for years.

Gone to the Dumpster, however, is the paperwork from the first house I bought as a young married guy in 1978. Fifty-five thousand dollars at 9.5%.

And then, the pictures of the wife. At 25, a beauty. Now pushing 50 and who knows where, is she still? Probably. She’s lucky -- while I age before my eyes, she’s frozen in my photo collection at 25.

On the other hand, can you have too many photos of the same friends and family?

Uh, how to say this delicately? Pictures of them at 7 ... and at 9

Decisions are yet to be made on other items. If they go the Dumpster route, does part of me go with them?

I had planned to be unsentimental in chucking stuff.

Now, I’m thinking: I need more boxes.