Where is the heart that doth not keep, Within its inmost core,
Some fond remembrance, hidden deep, Of days that are no more?
Who hath not saved some trifling thing, More prized than jewels rare—
A faded flower, a broken ring, A tress of golden hair?
— “‘Tis But a Little Faded Flower,” by Ellen Clementine Howarth
1) I first encountered this little poem as a song over the winter in Cecil B. DeMille’s Reap the Wild Wind; a minor character sings it at a tea party where Paulette Goddard meets Ray Milland for the first time. It charmed me so much I searched a little bit more in the internet, and found a folky version I actually prefer.
1a) Reap the Wild Wind has the feeling of a consolation prize for Paulette Goddard not getting cast as Scarlett O’Hara, the rarity of seeing John Wayne as the bad guy, Robert Preston (!) as a bully, a strong performance from Susan Hayward, and a giant squid. But I can’t recommend it.
2) The photo above was what remained of a cattlyea orchid corsage Mother must have worn to a college dance at some point between 1947-51. She kept it — and everything else! — all her life. Obviously it was one of the things my sister and I didn’t keep.
3) My KonMari journey this winter and spring has turned up a lot of answer d): all of the above. Trifling things, jewels rare, broken rings, chipped china, outdated picture frames, decaying papers, and memories in every emotional color.
4) And just like Mother, it turns out I have caches of things from particular periods stashed away in different parts of the house. For instance, Laura and I found a leather satchel full of things from Mother’s days as a Bluebird (or was it the Girl Scouts?), including beadwork and a Hollywood fan magazine with Jeanne Crain on the cover. Inside the covered wooden urn I got in Haiti 40 years ago was a galaxy of pins and buttons that I decorated my lapels with in college and high school, a sheaf of fortune cookie fortunes (I had been told it was bad luck to throw them away), and other detritus from the early 1980s.
4a) That urn was a focal point in my dorm room freshman year of college. My roommate and I nicknamed it Father, and actually convinced a Young Woman of Surpassing Credulity that my father’s ashes were inside. She was not amused when she took off the lid!
5) Completing this process by Memorial Day weekend feels impossible, especially when I consider the large volume of correspondence and photographs from my mother’s family still to examine and absorb. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up!