Birds and Bees

On today's to-do list: build a small cage around our strawberry patch to keep away marauding birds. I hate birds, even pretty ones (hummingbirds excepted), and the blue-jays and magpies that surround our house are at the top of my list. They've been picking off the strawberries as they ripen. This is unacceptable.

Other things on the to-do list: clean out old letters/cards. I have to admit, I'm something of a packrat. My husband, too, although less so. Between the two of us, we have quite an archive of correspondence. I have cards I received twenty years ago, from people I no longer remember. I have really personal cards from people I can't remember having been that close to (admittedly, my memory for such things is not long). I think I've kept every scrap of paper that anyone has ever written me, no matter how insignificant the message or the relationship. While it seems sad to toss away a fifteen-year-old message asking me if I want to go shopping, I think it's time to put these in the recycling bin. Of course, I'm going to continue to keep some of them, the ones from people who still matter to me, the ones with really meaningful messages.

A subset of the old letters/cards category is the memorabilia of past relationships. Both my husband and I had a "box" for each former flame. Going through these boxes was amusing - we've been together for so long that it felt like rifling through someone else's life, like gossip, rather than anything we had personally gone through. It did, however, make me feel old. Were we ever really as young as we sounded in these notes? I can't remember having been so young that it seemed important to keep things like receipts, showing where I'd been and when. And yet, they were there, in the Boxes. I do remember cutting paper snowflakes, which, when unfolded, said "I love u." Embarrassing to think of now. Hopefully, somewhere out there, my exes have already destroyed any Box they may have kept.

My husband, being a boy, had fewer such embarrassments. The same can't be said for his ex-girlfriends, who should be very relieved to know that these Boxes have now, finally, all been laid to rest in our shredder/recycling bin. The stuffed animals and other assorted gifts have been packed off to various charities. Ah, de-cluttering. Makes me feel like a new woman.