Things I Have Found Since I Began to Get Ready to Move

Swatches

Library school transcripts (3.75 GPA; it should've been higher but I got screwed on one grade, and I messed up on a couple others)

Undergraduate degree

Graduate degree

Kansas City Star from the early 1990s. It was the edition announcing the fall of Communism

A map I used as an undergrad to mark each new country that was created out of the collapse of the USSR

Some class notes and papers from my undergraduate degree; one paper from my first attempt at graduate school. Why I kept them for so long, I don't know. I looked at them once and decided I couldn't part with them. I looked at them again, and realized I needed to. So, I looked through my old exams (my handwriting was illegible), paged through my notes, and threw them out. I don't know why it was so sad, but it was.

Books from library school--things I thought I'd gotten rid of. I got rid of them this time

My job-hunting file from library school. I read through the rejection letters--some of them were really nice. Some of them were for jobs I didn't even remember applying for. But it brought back how stressful that was--those few months after graduation when I didn't know where I would live, how I would pay my bills, and what I would do. Thank god for some friends who came to my rescue. They took me into their house, let me live with them rent-free. Another friend of mine hired me for a project on campus... and they kept me on even after the grant money ran out.

Various stuff from when I was in Germany in the mid-1980s: pictures, flyers, newspapers, etc.

My sophomore year school picture. My junior prom picture. My senior picture. Horrible.

The certificate honoring the 30+ years my dad was a fireman. That one hit me hard. Dad was so proud to be a fireman. I spent a large amount of my childhood hanging out at the fire department. My brother and I would climb the trucks, play in the back of the ambulance... it was awesome. He was in a volunteer department, and he did it because that is what you did--you supported your community. Because it was a small town, it was inevitable that when you went on a call--like a car accident--it would be someone you knew. And it happened to him on more than one occasion. But I think the one hardest on him was when he showed up on a call (a single-car accident) and one of the other firemen met him as he got out of his truck. "You don't want to go down there" he told Dad. Then he told him who was in the car. Dick had been a friend of my dad's. He and his wife owned the restaurant across the street from the fire department. We ate there all the time. My brother and I both worked there in high school. Dad got back into his truck, drove into town, and cried. He told me it was the only time he had ever cried on a call. And then he went to see Dick's wife and he told her the bad news. For years when he would talk about it he would get teary-eyed. He told me it was one of the hardest things he had ever done. He came very close to quitting the department after that. I think he'd decided it was too hard, but he changed his mind. Dick's wife, Diane, eventually became my stepmom. At dad's funeral they had his gear in front of the casket--including his helmet with the number 13 on the top (13 was his lucky number). At the cemetery the firemen gave him a 21-gun salute (I think it was 21; it may have been a lower number). Most of the guys standing up there were crying. I'd known most of them my entire life. They'd known my dad for decades. I don't know how I ended up with dad's fireman achievement award, it seems like something Diane would have wanted. But I am glad I did.