A few of my favorite things

Deep sigh. I am moving. I hate moving. If all goes according to plan, I will be moving into my very first house. But regardless, thanks to the rampant capitalism of inner-loop leased real estate, I will be moving from my abode of 4 years. That rampant capitalism thing was not actually the impetus for the home buying thing, but merely a confirmation that the time had come.

Anyway, I am going through the apartment trying to have as little stuff to move as is Divameg-ly possible. A statement in which the Organist will find great humor– seeing as he played a significant role in the last two moves. Alas, he is geographically and temporally unable to reprise his starring role.

Anyway again, I find myself having to fight the urge to keep some things I really have absolutely no use for, simply because people I love gave them to me. My Mom would say, get over it! And I'm getting better. Probably another one of those maturity attacks. Somehow I doubt my loved ones center the measure of my affection on the stuff I've given them– with rare exception, thank you Maestro.

[NOTE: So I'm reading the above paragraph the next day and it reads badly. The aforementioned rare and notable exception is a good thing, and refers to a recent conversation about a particular gift. This is one of the drawbacks of late-night stream of consciousness writing.]

Anyway the third, one of the things I have no intention of getting rid of is technically detritus. It's a scrap of paper I ran across when I was going through our old 8mm films. Being the time before labelers and Post-its, folks were left to leave notations on actual paper. This actual paper is a "label" my Dad made for the film of my 3rd birthday party (this is actually not a shameless plug for my still-upcoming big 4-0 next month, just a coincidence. Really.).

Even before he died in 1992, one of my favorite things about my Dad was his handwriting. It was clean and elegant, always legible and completely identifiable as his. He always printed, never wrote in cursive. He could of course, and would do it as a parlor trick for his kids, who got a huge kick out of its femininity and non-Dad-ness.

Another thing he was great at was calligraphy, which he taught himself to do. I would spend afternoons and evenings in rapt attention as he got out the inkpots and quills and set to intricately scripting who remembers what in Old English and Zapf-y fonts. Friends and groups would ask him to do fancy stuff for special occasions.

Dad was also into woodworking, and could use a router (I guess that's what would be required) to carve those same beautiful fonts into wood, creating very artful albums and keepsake boxes.

Finding that scrap of paper was a wondrous gift and window back into one of the many lovely moments from my childhood. Of course, the films were great too, and eventually I had them turned into video for the family Christmas gift. The kiddos had a blast seeing their Moms and Aunties at their ages and younger.

Besides that scrap, one of the mementos I have of Dad's calligraphic talent was the announcement he made for my sophomore recital. It was a joint recital with my roommate. He was unamused when he realized that he had misspelled sophomore (like father, like daughter), but it was already printed and we weren't about to recall or redo it (like father, like daughter). The universe kept spinning, of course.

Here's a peek at some of my treasures: