Can You Keep Stuff Too Long?

Over the weekend, I was going through a box of photos that I brought back from Mother's apartment when she moved into the Assisted Living Facility. My older brother wants to see some pictures that were taken in about 1972 when he went with my parents on a trip to Japan, so I was searching through years and years of things Mother has saved.

Deep down in this box I found a plastic bag containing about 10 envelopes. As I started going through these envelopes, I found a few anniversary and birthday cards that Daddy wrote to Mother, back in the early years when he was still enamored of her. His written sentiments were so sweet and showed a side of their relationship that we kids never knew. I opened the next envelope and found some curls of hair. Then I turned to the front and saw it was my mother's mother's hair. At some point in her life (I'm assuming late in her life), her daughter cut some locks of her hair, put them in an envelope and has kept them for almost 68 years. (Her mother died when my brother, almost 68, was a babe in arms.

I thought this was rather grotesque (using the definition "ludicrously odd"), but I kept pulling out envelopes to see what else had been kept far beyond its life.

The next envelope was marked "Cut by Janet, June 8, 1953". I opened the envelope and—Darn, you guessed it!—a big clump of my reddish-brown hair. Two weeks before my third birthday. Next envelope: "Janet's Baby Hair". And one more: "May 9, 1955 - Jan". More little clumps of reddish-brown hair. (I thought I hadn't become "Jan" until dictated by my first grade teacher, Miss Padgett. But it looks like I had already become "Jan" before I turned five.)

Now let's establish one primary fact here: I have never felt loved by my mother. My older brother has indicated that he has always viewed her as harsh and unmoveable—which in Crews uncommunicative unspeak translates to "not loved by."

And yet she says things like, "When you were a baby I loved you so much I used to stand by your crib and cry."

Are three envelopes of my baby hair, held for 55-59 years, to be my affirmation that she truly did love me? That and the crying?

Maybe that's all she knew how to do. (The few stories I've heard about her father make me think this woman and all her sisters needed therapy—a lot of therapy—about 90 years ago! But that was a different world….)

No, the envelopes don't make me feel loved. They do confirm that my hair was much redder as a child. But loved? Not so much.

I just think it's odd.

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Okay, I'll confess. Somewhere around here I have some of Scott's and Tyler's baby teeth. They're not in envelopes, so I no longer know whose is whose. If I'm going to bow to "odd", I oughta get rid of them, huh? Maybe I kept them because that was before the divorce, when we were all a "family".

Maybe Mother kept those envelopes because I was likable/lovable at that age. This is the woman who said, "When you were fourteen, I didn't know what to do with you, so I just washed my hands of you."

Odd.

Ludicrously odd.