For Groundhog Day, a (Tiny) Winter's Tale
Curating the miscellany that someone leaves behind, and finding new insight in the old.
IN THE QUIXOTIC EFFORT to figure out ways to continue conversations with my parents even though they’re many years gone, I find myself engrossed in targeted curation that will help me do that. What do I mean by “targeted curation”? Pulling things, and slivers of things, out of what they left behind and saving those things for moments when they matter.
Here’s a miniature example of that. Four months ago, looking for something else, I encountered an email from my father from early 2004, when he was 81. It was about a number of things, but it featured, at the end, a throwaway side comment about Groundhog Day that contains a moment of his dry, understated humor that I so treasured (those of you who know me will know that I sometimes have trouble being understated).
I can hear his voice in my head, in the middle of winter, lamenting with some resignation the fact that Punxsutawney Phil, just 70 miles east, has poked his head out of his burrow and predicted six more weeks of frigidity:
I would be willing to contribute to a February 2nd blindfold for that creature.
So I socked the email away and pulled it out today, two decades later, for Groundhog Day 2024. It’s not much, just a passing remark in a forgotten missive. But in an unexpected way, it allows me to hear from my father.
IT FEELS EVEN MORE VALUABLE precisely because it’s not about something momentous or something that is typically saved as an “heirloom.” Instead, it feels like an everyday conversation — one from a generation ago, before dementia began to take his brain. It feels as if for just a moment, a moment in passing, he’s here and making one of his random trenchant comments.
After 9/11, we read so much about how it taught us that we should live every day as if it were the last. That was put forward as the best way to appreciate life.
But then I read an article — I don’t remember where — that took the opposite approach. What we must find, it said, is a mindset in which we could find days to take for granted again. That, it said, would be the real healing.
I consider a note like this to be a tiny manifestation of that sentiment. Would I — do I — love seeing momentous things written and left behind by my forebears? I would. I do. But having the forgotten slivers of everyday life reassert themselves? That’s a step closer to actually having them back. People don’t usually exchange gifts on Groundhog Day, but I consider this to be one.
Thanks for that. I recently came across a trove of letters and cards from my mom who died two years ago at the age of 81 from Alzheimers and vascular dementia. It was seeing her handwriting that was the gift for me. She was an elementary school teacher before my sister and I were born and later in life she developed a beautiful print/cursive combo that was unique and delightful. Her reports of weather and observations about local craft fairs etc. were the best part of those letters. That and some advice here and there that is as good now as it was then. Things like "Work hard, Beck. Enjoy the sunshine. And keep your chin up."