As summer ends, a time to reflect

So we're doing some spring cleaning around the house -- about a season behind schedule -- and it's triggered some thoughts about memory and sentimentality.

The simple act of cleaning off a chest of drawers was liberating, in terms of reclaiming space that I'd given up to an assortment of tsotchkes -- stress balls, pens, sticky note pads, luggage tags, pin-on badges -- and other odds 'n' ends, including shoelaces, toenail clippers, ear drops, eye drops, business cards and foreign coins. It's astounding (and embarrassing, I admit) to look back at what I accumulated over a period of years.

But at the same time, going through all that stuff was touching. I came across postcards I'd bought after museum visits in Tucson and Atlanta, as well as a card my sweetie had given me just to say "I love you." I tossed out old receipts, product warranties, even an old watch.

But I also rediscovered a small stack of handwritten notes I'd kept from a reporting trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, 20 years earlier. (It's pronounced wah-HAWK-ah.) Seeing all those names, addresses and other information in Spanish made me think back to those weeks in early December when a photographer and I traveled in the Mixteca Alta, the mountainous countryside outside the city of Oaxaca, to report on the economic conditions that drive poor, mostly undereducated Mexicans to the United States in search of a better life. I could visualize the evenings we spent dining and drinking at the zocalo (the town square), the delicious meals we ate at roadside shacks, and the kindness and generosity of people everywhere we went.

Tenderly, I examined the pages torn from a reporter's book with phrases from an indigenous language -- Mixtec -- and their corresponding meaning in Spanish. I'd had to rely on a translator to tell me in Spanish what a local resident was saying in Mixtec so I could in turn tell the photographer in English. An amazing trip, that was. Without a doubt, the highlight of my years as a reporter.

There was one mystery item: a key chain attached to a four-inch piece of macrame with six metallic letters spelling out GEORGE. As best as Lori and I could figure, it might have been a parting gift from one of our Japanese exchange students years earlier. Ayako, the first one, was around 12, as I recall. Chiho, the second one, was 19 or 20, I think. They'd be in their late 20s or early 30s by now. Wow.

I couldn't have spent more than two or three hours going through everything. Some items were easy to toss out. Others, not so much. The whole exercise made me slow down and really think about some things I'd held onto: When and where did I get them? What specific memory did they trigger? Did I care enough to keep them? If so, where in the heck would I put them?

We'll be doing more house-cleaning in the next few weeks. These questions will pop up again as I consider saving or tossing favorite items of clothing, old record albums and more.

Photographs: Copyright 2007-2009. Tanyo Ravicz. All rights reserved.
http://www.mixtecindian.com/Mixtec_Foto_Album.php?aa=0&si0=9