My first bride died in late July of 2024, and I spent some time with my first daughter in New Jersey, helping her to sift through the things her mother had collected in her life. When I returned to Indianapolis, I decided to make it easier for my children by clearing out some of the piles of stuff I have assembled. For instance, in my basement there is a box labeled, “Mom’s Knick-Knacks.” I packed it after my mother died in 2010, and I’ve opened it only once since then. I plucked one item from the top of the pile of newspaper-wrapped objects and opened it. It was a wooden saltshaker that my first bride and I had purchased for my mother from a vacation we had taken in another country. I’m the only one left who would know that, and I doubt that my three children would understand why I had that box.
As an aide to my three kids (my children are all above 30 years old) I began trying to reduce the clutter of my life. I spent a recent afternoon shredding tax returns dating back to 2006. I found a document from the Social Security Administration listing my earnings from 1963 to 2008. In 1963, my declared earnings were $63. I was in high school, and my mother had finagled a job for me in the closed stacks of the University of Pittsburgh library. My earnings statements brought back memories of the phases of my life. I saw the rise in earnings after I left Art School, and the drop when I arrived in Los Angeles California after I left Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. My cash flow grew after I started to work for Household Finance Corporation and dipped when I quit 10 years later. The cash flow burgeoned when I worked at the Marble Hill Nuclear Power plant in Madison Indiana; I was carrying a pencil while everyone else had a jangling tool belt. Also in the Social Security folder was an acknowledgement that I had applied for a new Social Security card in October 2008. This was because my original Social Security card, issued in 1963, listed only my middle and last names. When I applied for it, I was asked my name, and I replied, “Jon no ‘H’ Woods.” That’s what my card had on it for decades. Keep this folder, or shred?
In another folder there are my transcripts from high school and college. I enrolled at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany Indiana after I dumped the HFC job and got laid off at Marble Hill. (The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would not certify the safety of the plant, which was, I can assure you, unsafe.) There are some fond memories in those notes and transcripts, but should I keep or shred? Save the children? There is also a folder containing manuscripts for short stories, some of which were reviewed by professors, and others that I had submitted for consideration to be admitted to a writer’s conference in Bloomington Indiana. My first bride suffered through the composition of those stories as I punched the keys of a manual typewriter deep into the night.
I have a box of VHS tapes of movies that I loved, but no way to play the tapes. Should I call “Designed By Danny” and ask for Mr. David? Or leave them for my children? I also have piles of sketchbooks, some of which are 42 years old, and all of which have some blank pages.
I’m tired of the review of my life. I think I’ll take a nap.
cjon3acd@att.net