My Life as a Rolodex.

Yesterday, I recieved a bulky envolope from home. Taped shut and nearly bursting, I couldn't wait to discover what goodies lay within. To my great disppointment, I discovered a pile of 50 index cards from my family's roladex. The roladex has been sitting next to the house phone in Ohio for at least the last 15 years.

Attached was a note:

"I was cleaning out the openy-closey thing for telephone numbers and I pulled all the cards that looked to be your or Greg's high school friends. I mailed the cards to you. Please look through them and if you want any of them re-filed in the openy-closey thing, mail them back to me in the enclosed sel-addressed, stamped envelope. (Oh, that's a SASE, isn't it?) if some of them are Greg's, forward them to him in the stamped envelope provided. Thanks for helping to eliminate the clutter in Ohio!

Love--MOM"


Until this moment, I'd considered my mother a sane person.

I began sorting through the index cars: which ones to throw away, which ones to send back, which ones to forward to my brother. I was doing it half seriously, out of some obligation to my mother, but secretly planning to just get up and toss them all out.

The records, names, phones, and address, stretched back years. Some were written in the scrawling script of my teenage years. Some were writtin in my mother's hand, from a time when I was too young to do it myself. Some people I still talked to. Some, I hadn't seen ina very long time. Each card was a person, someone that was important enough to me at one time to be included in the Roladex, and each phone number elicted memories of our relationship. The experience was topped off when i came across the phone number of my high school sweetheart. I realized it had been 7 years since we dated.

"Maybe you should keep them," my roomate joked. I paused, then got a sandwich bag out of the kitchen and slide them in. I have a box in my room marked "ephemera," and I had suddenly relized these index cards were too important to ever throw away.

I have so few things that narrate my past. These cards were treasures.