Life's Accumulations



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This has been a strange week. The "heart thing" surely has me thinking more realistically about mortality, and it has strangely mobilized me. Out with the clutter in my life! Toss the accumulated meaningless possessions! Focus on what matters!

And so it was that I discovered my mother's baby book in a stack of miscellaneous papers. I must have once intended to look through them, so maybe an interruption landed them on the top shelf of an antique cupboard.

At first glance, it had the look of an old-fashioned storybook, but it was titled, "Baby's Story - an Autobiography". As I picked it up and started to open it, the speakers spewing a random playlist began playing "Feels Like Home to Me", a Randy Newman song sung by Bonnie Raitt. I froze. It was the song I sang to her when she was near death, the song that somehow revived her and rekindled her life-spirit. And there in my hands were the details of her birth: the date December 12, 1912 (which I knew) and the time 10 PM (which I hadn't ever heard). More entries recorded gifts and noted the dates she crawled, stood and walked, and there, still unfaded red, was a lock of her hair. Several pages later, a description of the baby bore the words "Red hair, Freckles, No brain!" and another (First Words) said "Hee-haw!" - each in her own penciled grammar-school handwriting.

This is clutter I shall keep.

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