Sentimental junk
I am a terrible pack rat. I find it hard to throw anything away. I am told this is a characteristic of a Cancerian who is a warm, loving person but who is irrevocably rooted in the home. And yes, a pack rat. My closets are full of clothes and shoes I haven’t worn in 10 years and never will wear again, but I can’t seem to part with them.
I am keeping the remains of old year books, souvenir programs, invitations, pictures, Christmas cards and letters — hundreds of them from my Mom, siblings, friends, and more-than-friends. I know I’ll never have the time to go back to them, but each item holds a memory of a person or place, of times past that bring back a smile, a tug at the heart, a sad or happy tear.
Besides, I’ve kept them for so long, I don’t have the heart to throw them out, even if I know that once I’m gone, no one will be interested in them, and they will be thrown away.
I kept my notes, false starts, first drafts and printed versions of articles I wrote as a journalist until a few years ago, when the Ateneo library for women’s writings opened its shelves to memorabilia of women writers and my papers found a home. But that hardly made a dent on the random files and thousands of pictures accumulated over six decades that occupy space in the attic, my aparador, even a corner of my bathroom.
Recently, I had to go over my boxes and old envelopes of memorabilia to find keepsakes of my father, Jess Paredes Jr., who turns 100 in March. We siblings decided that we should put our memories of our father, who died too soon in 1957 when we were all very young, in a commemorative book. In the process, I have gotten to know my father better. I found the Silver Jubilee souvenir program of Ateneo HS class of 1931 where my Dad, in a long essay on the history of the Jesuits, showed that he was a Jesuit at heart. In fact, he had planned to enter the seminary had he not met my Mom and got God’s message to go forth and multiply instead.
My Mom was also a pack rat. She had boxes of memorabilia that I used to rummage through as a kid when no one was looking. Last Sunday, my sister Lory and I went through these boxes and found Mom’s old green album with pictures and newspaper clippings of her as a young swimmer in the Asian Olympics in the 1930s. There were telegrams and greeting cards congratulating her and Dad on their wedding on Dec. 31, 1936. One precious find was a picture of her and Dad grinning happily, first time parents with their first born, Jesse, between them.
We found a tin of full of our parents’ love letters. It was thrilling to realize their passion for each other that never waned from their courtship to the abrupt end of their marriage 20 years later. We found breathless missives when they were apart, and hurried notes on ordinary, practical matters written in pencil on pink paper, that always ended with declarations of love and longing. These letters are proof positive that every one of their 10 children was conceived in love.
Mom didn’t throw anything away. We found pieces of rosaries, rusted medals, prayer books in Latin and Spanish, pictures of relatives some of whom we didn’t know, Dad’s awards, spiritual bouquets and homemade cards from her children, our honor cards in elementary school, and every letter we ever wrote her since we were kids.
There were also commemorative estampitas from first communions, ordinations, births and deaths of family and friends, including a couple from Fr. Horacio de la Costa’s ordination in New York on March 24, 1946 that I have claimed and are in my private collection.
Mom kept receipts of insurance premium payments, the purchase of a washing machine, our first car, and other mundane transactions, and a journal and notebook that listed all of our household expenses to the last centavo, as there was not much to go around then. We found a piece of paper with Jimmy Stewart’s autograph. I recall going to the Manila Hotel with my Mom and my older sisters and actually knocked on his hotel room door. The actor opened the door wearing a bathrobe and graciously signed the paper we thrust on him.
I found another yellowed piece of paper dated Jan. 25, 1954, with the dedication: “To my young friend Pauline (sic) Paredes with affection” and signed Ramon Magsaysay. He must have written it when he visited my grandparents’ home in Sampaloc. The whole family turned up, and out on the narrow street, the neighborhood waited and mobbed him as he left.
What to do with these precious memorabilia? Since we can’t take it with us, my sister has refiled our letters, pictures, honor cards and other sentimental junk in individual envelopes to be returned to each of us when we get together in March for Dad’s 100th birthday. Our parents’ love letters have been scanned and preserved in digital form to inspire future generations. The commemorative book will document those parts of our parents’ lives that their children remember, with some help from the contents of Mom’s old boxes.
Memories fade, along with ink and pencil on paper, and old photographs. Sooner than later these will all be lost. This is our attempt to make sure our parents’ precious legacy lives on, for our future generations to learn from and be inspired and hopefully live by.
