Shelf of Memory

As I work on unpacking and cleaning in my room today I found more things from my past that I had forgotten I had.

Not living in your room for a few years will do that to you I suppose.

On the top of my bookshelf under the windowsill, I have many different keepsakes from my time growing up. Things that were "important" so I put them on "display." Some of these things have been there since the day Dad finished building the bookshelf and moved it into my room.

I have a snowglobe I was given as a baby. It's a "February" snowglobe...with a figure of a girl looking at a small flower poking through the snow. Over the years it has begun to lose water and now the water just barely covers her head. I remember playing with it as a child until Mom would yell at me to put it down before I broke it (but it's plastic. So I'm not sure how I would have broken it).

I have my piggybank that I was given when I was little. There's no money in it anymore...it just sits there collecting dust, a lost memory of my childhood, and a forgotten memory of Mom teaching me how to save money.

There's a wooden elephant...I cannot remember which parent it belonged to, but I have it. It used to be on display in the cabinet in the living room but I remember asking to play with it so often that it just became mine, along with the beaver figurine I also have on the bookshelf.

There's a clown with a wax face and no real body...just a cloth outfit with clothespins in the feet to give them weight. This is another thing I'm not sure where I got, but he's been sitting on the shelf for years collecting dust. I remember distinctly being terrified of it as a child.

My first music box which plays a lullaby. It's in the shape of the baby and as it plays the baby "crawls." I'm not sure where my mother found it or if we ever used it to help me sleep, but there it sits...collecting dust on the shelf.

And then we have more modern things that I put on the shelf to put on display if you will. My mini statues of Gollum and Minas Tirith. Each came with one of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies that I got as gifts in high school. Once I have my own office, those will be coming with me as decorations for my desk.

And finally, laying face down on the top of the bookshelf, is my copy of my mother's obituary notice. We got special laminated copies for the family members. I couldn't put mine where I could see it because it kept making me cry uncontrollably. Perhaps it's time I move it somewhere where I can see it more often.

The things on this shelf have become forgotten over the years. They have sat there collecting dust since the last time I touched them...for some of these things that would have been over 10 years ago. I'm not sure what I'll do with these things when I finally do leave this house. They're keepsakes I would like to keep for my own children one day...but would they want them? Would they want these old remnants of a childhood long gone?

Time will tell, I'm sure.

But in the meantime...I need to find a better storage place for these things.