The last time I was in Washington, we had cleaned out a lot of my parent’s old stuff, and I was leaving after having booked a real estate agent to sell off the property. There were boxes and bags of miscellaneous papers that were going to be thrown out or destroyed, and I scooped up a luggage bag full of it without looking closely at it — I just didn’t want to abandon some piece of family history. I haven’t dug into it yet, but I had a moment free and plucked out a few random bits to see what treasures I had rescued.
Here are my parents, sometime in the late 1980s/early 90s.
Here’s Mom’s 5th grade report card (my grandmother also saved everything.)
That’s pretty good, young lady, but we’re going to have to have a little talk about that C in writing. Also, what’s the difference between writing and English?
I didn’t get any further in sorting through the collection because then I discovered she had saved all the mother’s day cards we had sent to her. Aww, Mom. You cared? Now I feel bad for not sending one this year. I am a terrible son.
Writing probably means penmanship
Yes, writing would’ve been penmanship and at that age, English was probably grammar.
Hah, and also punctuation, which I would have failed with my previous comment.
“Mrs. Paul Westad”?
My grandmother. My mother’s mother. That “Mrs So-and-So” construction is very 1950s.
I still have my grandmother’s birth certificate.
I also still have her high school year book.
From the 1920s and over 100 years old.
I can’t bear to throw it away but also can’t think of anything to do with it but store it in a box.
I’m wondering if one of the local museums where she lived might want it.
I believe documents like this are known as “ephemera”.
Definition
Ephemera is a term for collectible items that were created for a specific purpose and were not intended to be kept or preserved. The word comes from the Greek word for things that only last a day
As someone who has also recently lost my Mom, just be happy that your siblings are being cooperative adults.
Mine are being horrifying vultures. Fml.
Yes, “Mrs. (Husband’s name)” is quaint. I’m glad we’ve moved on from that (perhaps).
Writing vs English. One is learning to speak and write it correctly. Thats English. Writing is writing English, (or another language), legibly. I was straight ‘A’s” in English but could only manage a ‘C’ in writing. I learnt to write firstly with slate pens then with a pen dipped in ink. Biros were considered an instrument of Satan and forbidden until I reached secondary school. Teachers had creative descriptions of my writing. One Maths teacher reckoned I used an alcoholic spider. An English teacher called it “The Waltz of the Fly in Ink time”. The only improvement came when another Maths teacher recommended using a fountain pen. That forced me to slow down my writing meaning I formed letters better. The only problem being a lefty was smudging the ink before it dried. I still use fountain pens but with modern inks smudging is less of a problem. Getting decent paper that takes the ink without it bleeding through is a bit hit and miss though.
Out of curiosity I wonder how many of your dad’s razor blades (and maybe yours) are rusting away behind the drywall in the bathroom of that house, if it hadn’t been gutted and remodeled since the rise of disposable cartridges. Only recently I learned razor blade caches hidden in bathroom walls of older houses are a thing and the many metaphors that could serve. Stuff older generations foist on the newbies.
Weird stuff:
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/razor-blade-slots-in-homes-36923000
With a sledgehammer you could have saved those precious heirlooms.
Stuffed away in my waterproof evacuation tubs are high school yearbooks and a report card or two of my mother’s. No old leg razors thank goodness.
Yes! We had our basement ripped up for remodeling, and the bathroom was dismantled. The contractor warned us there was a razor blade disposal behind one wall; they didn’t take it out, but let us know that if we did future work back there it would be something to be concerned about.
I don’t know about my parents’ place. It was a pretty common arrangement in days of yore.
My aunt died a few years ago. She never married and was my dad’s only sibling. He was already gone at the time so the job of settling her estate came to me. I found an old dusty trunk in a closet that had all the usual stuff; old report cards, souvenirs from vacations past and photos of unidentified people. In the bottom of the trunk I found a tattered cardboard box tied with a ribbon. That’s where the real valuables were. On top there was a 1914 German officer’s Luger. He must have brought it home from the war in France. Under it were his discharge papers and a letter of commendation from the CO of the US Army 53rd Pioneers for bravery in the Battle of the Meuse, which also mentioned that he had suffered mustard gas exposure and his Italian passport and paperwork from Ellis Island. He emigrated in 1911. It turned out his given name was Rafael Umberto. I only knew him as Ralph, which was the name on all his official business, and Albert, the name used by all his family and friends. Best of all was a photo of my dad’s birth mother holding him on her lap. He looked to be about 1 year old at the time. She died a year later, a month after my aunt was born. Other papers revealed that my grandfather married the woman that I knew as my Nonna in 1932 and that they had a boy named Eugene who died in infancy.
All of that was family history that I never knew because my dad never talked about those things.
When I was cleaning out my Mother’s home, there were alot of photo albums.
I took some of them to her care facility to show her but she had only very vague memories most of the people.
That distressed her. A lot.
So I stopped doing that and sent the rest to the dump.
Yes, they sure do. Ways plural.
I am so very lucky with mine.
When we moved one of the beds out of Mom’s house after she was gone, we found a gift box under it with my name on it. Inside were various artifacts of my life from before I was maybe 16. Report cards, pictures, letters I had received from old friends after we moved, etc. I honestly don’t know what to do with it.
Agreeing with others saying penmanship. I got ripped apart by my first grade teacher–an absolutely miserable POS of a human being–for my “bad” writing skills. Never freaking mind that I was six years old and just learning…!
Mrs. McCatherine, a hearty GFY, you miserable turd. Nobody liked you, not even the parents.
My mother in law died two years ago and we’ve been dragging our feet cleaning out her house. My wife’s childhood home. MiL lived there 74 years. We were working in the article this morning and I looked in an old wooden box. Found my wife’s father’s workbooks from the 30s. FFA workbook was interesting. His father was a subsistence farmer. Very interesting stuff.