measuring time

  You just never know what will survive through the generations. I'm thinking about those little items that have a connection to your family and the past. I'm thinking about those objects that become treasure. I've had this particular treasure for quite a few years now, well over twenty at least, but rediscovered it yesterday. As I was sorting through my tools, making another attempt at organizing them, telling myself I really do need to thin that collection out, I picked up my fathers ruler. It is one of those six foot wooden folding rulers used by carpenters. I remember it well, playing with it and getting yelled at for that. That's not a toy, you'll break it! Put that down.

  I'm thinking dad would be amazed that it lased this long and that I would attach any value to it. It has become treasure to me. Now I'm certain he had several of them as they tend to get broken and the numbers wear off from use. He had a special pocket on the side of his coveralls designed to hold that ruler. It does have that little brass sliding bar for measuring inside measurements, a very handy little gadget. Those rulers have been replaced by the steel tape measures we are all familiar with today. It's funny how long ago those tapes were available, the steel self- retracting kind I mean, but I don't recall dad having one until sometime in the 1960's or so. He still used that wooden ruler most of the time, I suppose more habit than anything else. 

 That ruler is a connection to my father. You could say it is a measure of time. I intend to display and save it in some fashion only to please myself. That ruler would have no meaning to anyone else but me at this point. It isn't anything I have used, just something that survived all these years and all the moves. So many things get lost on the journey in our lives. My parents sold my childhood home while I was in the navy. As a result, many of the items in my bedroom didn't survive that move. Then after a twenty year career in the the navy more items have been lost or abandoned. Toward the end of her life my mother did begin to give items that she had saved over the years that were connected to me. Little things I had made in school or some curio I admired, along with things that she had made. All those things having survived the journey. 

 I've thought that may have been what it was like when those pioneers were traveling west. They had loaded up their wagons with all their possessions. All the things, big and small that they determined were necessary to take along. It wasn't too long before they discovered they had to lighten the load. Slowly they began leaving things alongside the roadway, other things just never survived the journey. The value placed on those items constantly changing, balanced against the desire to reach that destination. I think we do the same on an unconscious level throughout our lives. I've abandoned things along the way for a variety of reasons. I'm no different than most, grabbing at the new and abandoning the past. Nostalgia is for Christmas and that holiday season. 

 But now, now I'm thinking I have reached my destination. I can hold onto all the things I want without any pressure to abandon them along the wayside. The only pressure comes from myself, and an occasional "do you really need all that junk" from my wife. I'm holding onto the treasure! The struggle now becoming to convince others that it is treasure, not junk. The old adage one man's treasure becoming crystal clear in its' meaning. 

 But the reality is we don't get to assign your sentimentality. Sentiment is perhaps one of the most personal things we have. It's right up there with religion and politics in terms of importance. It's an integral part of who we are. I may have reached my destination but my stuff hasn't! I do need to attend to that before my next move. But I realize a simple truth, you never know what will survive, you don't get to know that for a very simple reason, you aren't here. The journey is over. I'll know where I am. Will I know anything about where I've been? Won't know that until I  get there.