Buried Treasure

They are moving my group at work from one building to another. It's been amazing. The new cubicles are only 1' shorter in each direction than the ones we have now (7'x9' instead of 8'x10'), but that's an amazing difference. For one thing, the old cubicles have four shelves, where the new one will only have one -- it would have had two, but I have enough seniority for a window seat. I had already thoroughly overflowed the old cubicle. So this past week has been one of weeding through and reducing the amount of files I keep.

I have been surprised by the number of things I've been involved with at work and forgotten. Not necessarily that I've done, but that I was consulted about. I also found a number of other things -- such as several requests for compensatory time off in lieu of paid overtime pay when Jennifer was pregnant and my schedule was screwy, for instance. But among the old Christmas cards, collected pennies received from the cafeteria which couldn't be used in the vending machines, the warning that an audit of the company's books revealed they had undercharged me by $15 for insurance my first year and they would be taking it out of my pay over the next few paychecks, the duplicate copies of documents on my projects, Christmas cards from co-workers, salvaged magazine articles covering things I needed to know, and saved company training handouts covering things that I'd still need to look up if ever I tried to use them anyway, I found treasure.

Jellybean has been healthy, energetic, and adventurous for long enough now that I've forgotten on anything but an intellectual level that he was a premature baby with difficulties eating. Lately, in fact, he has been complaining because he can no longer stand up inside the fort his Grandma cut from a large cardboard box. (He's a good couple of inches taller than the box now; I don't know why he just started complaining recently.)

I found four photos that I had taken to work and left in a drawer. One was of Jennifer and me in hardhats, taken at a mine near Kellogg, ID. The others were of a very young Jellybean, who had to be propped up against the arm of the recliner that we now don't let him sit in because he climbs on it so.

I suppose that if we took the time to periodically look back through all the old photos -- whether in albums or digital -- and other memorabilia that we collect over the years, instead of coming across them when we are looking for something else or on a cleaning spree, facing that the fact that Jellybean was once a baby would be a more immediate and less intellectual process. I suppose, too, that after being shown the photos he would be readier to say that they were of "baby Jellybean" and not one of the babies currently at day care.

I don't think, however, that periodic reminiscence would help him recognize that his mother and father are in the photo, not his Mams and Grandaddy.

-=-