time for you, time for me

My mother sent me a physical copy of an email I wrote her in 2003 in the mail. It was written on a 2003 computer and printed out on a 2003 printer. I read it with 2011 eyes and saw that it was pretty boring, although it was sent to her right after I had arrived in England, so maybe she had printed it out in 2003 for posterity as I am her first-born and her first child to travel to a foreign country alone. The letter was sent using my 2003 email account which is no longer my current email account as I long ago made the necessary transfer from Yahoo! to Gmail.

My mom has a habit of sending me things in the mail that she has found that I either made or took or wrote. She is a big fan of traditional mail. The other week she sent me a picture that I had taken of some tree branches in our backyard in some misguided attempt at being artistic (I still have not been cured of this) and a picture of me at our family dinner table in front of a birthday cake. “I found these and I thought I would send them to you,” she wrote in the accompanying letter, her scrawl familiar and looped.

I’ve gotten so used to digital reminders of my past that this physical, concrete evidence leaves me confused. I am unsure of her intent. She printed this email out eight years ago and then eight years later sent it to me in the mail so I could deal with it. And now I am unsure. Do I throw it away? It’s not very scrapbook-worthy. It’s not very interesting. And yet here it is, it’s in my possession.

I feel like she is slowly sending me a time capsule, piece-by-piece. All of these items, this detritus of my past, is accumulating on my dresser until I figure out how to deal with it. Maybe one day I will send it all back.