“Cast” ing Away Keepsakes

My parents are redoing my old bedroom in their house to convert the room into a guestroom. My room had 2 twin beds and was painted in a buttercup yellow color with lattice and ivy wallpaper along the bottom half of the walls. The “new” room is painted a breezy blue color and the new cherry bedroom suit includes a queen size bed, which will be a nice improvement from the twin beds on the occasions that Aaron and I spend the night. The new Cape-Cod style room is going to be really nice, but in order to get it looking nice Mom and Dad had to clean out the whole room, including the 2 walk-in closets, so the woodwork could be painted. In cleaning out the room, Mom found TONS of my old keepsakes. I went to her house to get some of my stuff over the weekend. The keepsakes ranged from diaries from my grade school years, to marching band memorabilia, to formals from high school dances and the most recent addition… my wedding dress and veil. Among the keepsakes were a couple boxes of t-shirts from all of my high school activities, band, drama, cheerleading, etc. There were trinkets from school dances and marching band contests. All the usual keepsake kind of stuff. There was also an unusual keepsake among the piles of items. This was a keepsake that I didn’t even know I had kept…

It was my cast from when I broke my leg the summer before 7th grade!!!! I would have been around 12 at the time, which means that the cast is 11 years old!!!! Amazingly, for being almost half as old as I am, the cast wasn’t toooo terribly disgusting. It was packed in a clear plastic bag and I laughed as I read the signatures that covered it. The signature from my mom, near my toes, that said “WOW” instead of “MOM” to me when I was wearing it. The signatures of two foreign exchange students, Pedro and Liza, that went to the Indianapolis Zoo with mom and me and pushed me in a wheelchair so I didn’t have to walk on crutches the whole time. (Pedro kept acting like he was going to push me into things.) Nick’s signature, signed “Nick, Class of ’95.” (He had just graduated from high school.) A touching signature that read “Fratello” written by my best friend Amanda’s dad, who has since passed away. (Amanda’s dad, Dave, had an Italian restaurant named “Fratellos.”) The list could go on and on. It was amazing that that old, somewhat gross cast sparked memories that otherwise may have been lost. That’s the whole reason behind saving “keepsakes” isn’t it?

Unfortunately, I have way too many keepsakes from my younger years and my house isn’t nearly big enough to store everything that my parents are purging from my old bedroom. So, my mission for the next couple weekends (if I’m lucky enough to have any downtime during them) is to take pictures of my memorabilia and create a whole “Keepsakes” photo CD. All the memories on a little CD that will help keep my house from a state of total clutter. Wish me luck on completing this project : )

I'll post pictures of the cast when I get a chance...