Parents, Aunt and Uncle punting on the Cam

We are in the process of throwing things out or giving them to Goodwill: Things like a shell collection, kids’ old toys, children’s drawings, vases, books, photographs, souvenirs from trips and so on; a large conch that an early girlfriend held against my ear so that I could hear the ocean surf; things we have been carting around for decades, subliminally keeping memories alive. Some things, notably family photographs, are spare and kept in a box of family archives. As I look through them, I realize that I can still breathe life into those moments caught by the camera, but when we die, their lives that have been sustained by our memories will end more finally than before. When there are no more people alive who ever knew mom or dad, it will almost be as if they had never existed. I look at a photograph of them in their early thirties punting on the river Cam in Cambridge together with Sue and Bob McSherry. I remember mom and dad telling me about the experience and about dad’s days as a student there: I look at the McSherrys and can almost hear them talking and laughing. I see them all grow and age. Now they are gone. We hang on to the pictures. But the time will come when the photographs won’t mean anything to anyone. They will be tossed out and with them the lives of those we strangely keep alive.

                                                                                                   

Collections

In the process of clearing out, we had to make difficult decisions to get rid of boxes of toys, collectibles, documents and souvenirs that we had accumulated over forty years.

My collection of wine corks was the first to go. I had started collecting these corks twenty-five years ago in Canada when I started paying attention to wine. The corks told a story: Many were from bottles of Bordeaux: Medoc was my favorite. Some Grand Cru Classe from famously regarded appellations, many from good vintage years. The corks reflected the world of wine producing countries: Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Portugal and even Canada and the United States. And for most of the corks, memories of the taste of the wine, and the circumstance under which the wine was purchased. The corks were carted around from home to home, saved for who knows what. Now they’re gone. I still have a collection of wine labels tucked in between the pages of a book on wine.  One day the book will be thrown out.

I should mention in passing that I also had a collection of beer coasters that I threw out a few months ago. The difference between the coasters and the corks is more than the difference between beer and wine. Each coaster was picked up in a pub where I had just enjoyed a beer: Many from English pubs, some from Australia, and several from Canada and the US. I had long harbored a dream that one day I would have a pub bar in the basement of our home. The bar would also feature a collection of matchboxes and boarding passes that I had accumulated around the world during my business travels.  The dream now just a dream.

Dunmanus Bay, Ireland

Another collection that I had completely forgotten about was a large box of shells. These too had been carted from home to home, country to country: Shells from the Eastern Cape and  Natal in South Africa, a collection  from the south coast of Jamaica, and shells from Dunmanus Bay in Ireland. The shells brought back the feel of wet, grainy sand underfoot, the salty feel of the moist air, the warmth and smell of Jamaica, the chill and dampness of Ireland’s southwest coast. In the collection were sun-bleached specimens of coral from Jamaica’s north cost, bringing back memories of family snorkeling inside the reef of Ocho Rios. I threw all of them into the garbage except for the large conch that Maria bought me many years ago in Durban. I donated that together with a box of objet-d’art to the local Goodwill store. Perhaps someone will buy it, someone who knows that if you hold it up to your ear you will hear the sound of ocean surf.

Alligator Pond, Jamaica