Keepsake

Take any of the trinkets crowding your shelf and behold it in the daylight from your window. What makes you hold on to this item? Imagine a visitor asking about a chipped souvenir with raised eyebrows. Taking the souvenir from their hands, setting it safely back onto the shelf, what will you tell them?

Your story gives meaning to a piece that others might disregard as junk. So you tell them about your mother who made this when she was a child growing up in a foreign country. Who left her home to pursue her dream in a new world. About her parents who kept it as a keepsake. Give the ignorant visitor your reason for holding on to something nobody else cares about.

We all have stories to tell. Stories that linger in the back of our mind. Cautionary tales that keep us up at night. Anecdotes we keep hearing at family gatherings. Write down your story to share it with others. Because the trinket might not make it through the next move, earthquake or fire.

Your memories are pieces of a puzzle. You start by identifying pieces and searching for a place for each of the them. Putting them together, you begin to see the bigger picture with some holes left. You might find a place for a piece that never fit before. You discover new meaning by writing your story. 

But not every piece has to go in. Not every detail needs to be told. The challenge is to sort through the clutter. What do we disregard and what do we keep? Much like the clutter in your house, some of your memories are hard to look at. Some things are not on display but hidden in your closet. 

Some moments in life are hard to talk or write about. But before you stuff everything down and out of sight, take a closer look. You decide if it’s worth keeping. Only you have the stories that are bound by these items. Once these keepsakes are gone, so are their stories. Unless you write them down.

So, here’s an idea for beginning memoir writers who need to declutter their desk to sit and write. Pick up any item and use it as a prompt before you put it away. Writing down your story declutters your home and your mind.