My brother was looking through one of my mother suitcases and he broke out a half laugh and half cried and handed me a small piece of paper, it was a receipt dated April 28, 1979. I can't tell what it was that she bought but it was from the store that had gone out of business called Two Guys. He said "wow, look how neat she kept this receipt all these years".
I took over my mother "briefcase", beside the old birthday and Christmas cards from her friends and her diary, most of her paper works were receipts, neatly in the folder with her other note books. One receipt dated 07/14/1981 for $12.43 from the general store. I can't tell what the items were but whatever it was, my mother bought two of it. One receipt was for the fuzzy wool balls remover, my mother bought 2 of those items too, and the date of the receipts was October 20, 1983. I remember when my mother gave me that wool fuzzy remover in 1983.
My mother said to me as she demonstrated how the little toy worked wonder. She moved the device with the razor side against her sweater up and down slowly and showed me the collected loose fuzzy wool balls inside the clear container and explained to me "see all the fuzzy balls got stuck inside the container? And now you have a perfect smooth wool sweater". Her movements just like the man from the late night on the commercial on television for the same product. I don't know what I did with the novelty gift but the receipt was still in perfect shape in my mother many folders. I wondered if my mother planned to return the item just in case I didn't want it, or was she thinking that the item had a defect and she needed the receipt to return it.
I found a very faded receipt and the date was 2/20/1979 for $19.99 from Macys. I can't tell what she bought but I think it was a black slack. My mother had this black slack that she worn wherever she went. She washed the pants every weekend and put it right back on. My mother had other slacks in many different shades of navy, brown, and beige. But the black slack was her most favorite one because she seemed to wear it wherever we went. If it got too old and out of its shape, she replaced it with another similar black slack.
I asked my brother what he wanted to do with all the receipts, he said he would like me to go through them and separate important papers and the rest just toss it. I felt the time just froze around me and disabled me to move. How can I throw all these receipts and notes out after all these years and the few places that my mom had lived in! I wanted to save them in a time capsule. My brother read my mind and said “if you keep them and when it's your turn to go, Bob or someone else is going to toss them out and you just make an extra job more difficult for them or whoever”. I tried to reason with him that if mom had saved these receipts for all those years, we might as well keep them, they don’t have any value or any memento to them but the fact that the receipts had been with her for over 3 decades. My brother told me I can have them. Few days later, some of my mother old belonging including the receipts and my mother very old black slacks covered with the little fuzzy balls were tossed out in the garbage bin.
Almost 9 years later since my mother passed away, I organized my desk and filed all the old bills to get ready for the current bills in my drawer. I came across my 10K time on the postcard from one of my races in my younger and faster year. I can feel the adrenaline rises slowly in me, those were the fast running year of my life. That same year I was dreaming that one day my mother and I would do a marathon together, I run and my mother walk, because my mother loved to walk. My dream never came true. I looked at the postcard with my time on it, and I wanted to toss it out in the trash. It does not have any sentimental meaning to anyone but me, instead I put it back in the folder labels “misc. stuff” with my other receipts.I have acquired my mother's habit!
