Q

i’ve always been bad at keeping sentimental gifts.

once i left a note Zephyr gave me – pastel with whimsical animals edged around her curly, purple letters – between pages of a library book. funny story, really: her friend picked up the exact book, saw her name, and passed it to Z — who then gave it to me (a second time) quite amusedly.

i’m the same way with all other memorabilia i receive – letters, postcards, cute doodles – they dissolve into shelves and under my bed. if i had kept them all it would be quite a pile, frankly, given that i’ve spent 10 years in girls’ schools and the next 2 surrounded by girls’ school girls (Nanyang).

sometimes i wonder if my carelessness is callous, but the truth is i do love and appreciate all these little things given to me, as much as i love giving them to others (i do this a lot… spontaneously and with any scrap material i can find).

most of my closest friends and family are sentimental object hoarders. my family has two cabinets full of purely photos, organized in chronology, stashed in event-indexed albums. they date from my mom’s childhood all the way to my late primary school years (after which digital photos took over).

Vanessa amazed me once over at her place, when she dragged out a HUGE box (although chest would be a more appropriate description) of sentimental artifacts she’d collected over the years. i saw many of my own in there – birthday cards, scraps of paper we played hilarious hangmen games on, notes we passed in class (even though we sat together LOL), random quotes encouraging each other for exams.

while i was duly impressed at her diligent, even manic, safekeeping of memories, V’s calmness told me she didn’t go out of her way to collect them, it was simply in her nature to do it.

and for some reason i’m the complete opposite. nothing stays with me for long. spring cleaning is often an archaeological adventure for me: i excavate random bits of yesterday (a technicolored, tassel-ed scrapbook G gave each of us, a series of short stories co-written by C and i). and then they shuttle back into the unknown.

the memories i keep are digital and transcribed into words. i keep moments and quotes on my blog, the precious ones i want to revisit years later. it doesn’t have as much of a sentimental value as physical objects – authentic proof of the time – but they work for me. maybe because reading my own words reinstates the time more concretely for me. i don’t know.