Friends:

Yesterday Malia & I had to go to Calistoga to clean up all my mother's things.  Just the drive exhausted me, much less hauling boxes & trash bags, etc.  I left with one grocery bag, mostly photos.  Seemed funny, 75 years of life, and that's all that anyone would want, is one little sack.  [Malia and I promised each other we'd never do that to our kids, and in fact I went home and, tired as I was, threw a whole bunch of things out just on principle.]

Thousands of photos of rose bushes, somebody's cat, a skyline; piles of old autumn leaves, pieces of coral, .... and while we were laughing hopelessly at all this, we were well aware we have our own such caches.  The funniest part, there were walnuts everywhere, in every imaginable sack, box, & cupboard.  Why?? -- We will never know.  We started laughing harder and harder at each new stash.  At one point I found this nice looking zippered "leather" bag, and thought I'd finally found something worth keeping.  It looked like a shaver or calculator, and when I unzipped it, there were 2 neat rows of... walnuts!  I cracked up, and had to show my sister.  Then, when I'd finally gotten all the way to the bottom of my side, I found a nutcracker, and broke up again.

Along with zillions of things where I kept asking, "Why did she keep this?" there were also many things where I didn't even know WHAT it was.  Along with insurance papers for a car sold in '85, letters from people I never heard of, tapes of speakers at her church, zillions of tapes unmarked and not in cases, zillions of unmarked cases w/no tapes, .... hard to describe.  We found several dozen rolls of shelf paper, gummed labels, organizer files, etc., all mashed, stained, & ancient, so we surmise she entertained some CONcept of organizing, just couldn't do the execution part.

As we left, I spotted the most outrageously beautiful piece of bark with lichen on it, that celadon ruffly kind of lichen, and I really wanted it.  But I slapped my hand and forebore.  But I was still grumpy that evening, about having left it behind.  On the way home, we spotted some of the marsh burrs that I saw on my first trip to San Francisco long ago, and had made Doug help me pick them and wrap and crate them and send them home to Honolulu.  He still makes very wry faces when he sees them along the roadside nowdays.  Malia & I have concluded that it's genetic.  I am guiltily averting my mind from thoughts of all my sand dollars, driftwood scraps, river stones, etc.  What I REALly need is some wilderness beach home, where I can put all of these treasures in my garden.

Well, an odd sort of day.  I'm glad it's over with.  It made me very tired.