The Old Cedar Box

the hinges are broken ... the butcher twine is for safety

Yesterday I finished a search through old papers, trying to find my grandmother’s will.

I do have her life story: three type-written pages.

A whole life in three pages.

That didn’t seem to be enough but perhaps even that is good.

In that hunt I looked through 3 other treasures, mostly of historical value.

... the lid pulls off -- the box has smoke damage

 Personal papers that Doral and Wyora kept in the top left hand draw of the 9 drawer vanity in their bedroom.

One of the treasures was a cedar box.

The other was a tin box. Doral must have told me what was in them. I knew what the boxes when I was growing up -- that they contained papers that were valuable to my parents

... singed contents ...

... open the lid and find out about Alberta Field trials in 1928 ...

I spent the day looking through those two boxes and a third item, a tin filing box.

There are files about his dogs, files about the insulation company he ran, files between Doral and the Province of Alberta when he tried to get them to fix a stretch of highway that was dangerous and where one of his children was killed, etc.

I skimmed through everything, sometimes stopping, sometimes moving on.

So for Day #4 of the Hundred Best Days of My Life, I had a chance to look backward, into a past that is long gone, but still loved.

Arta