It's Almost May Day

I don't know about you, but I don't keep a lot of personal papers anymore: cards, letters, newspaper clippings, even bills, are tossed out with the bi-weekly recycling. I pay all my bills online and I've opted out of most paper invoices. It's not necessarily that I'm trying to be environmentally correct, though I am, but I've never really had a good filing system at home. Though I have an office with a desk at home, I don't have file cabinets, nor would I be that interested in creating folders at work that resemble the folders in the office. All my important papers are collected in empty shoe boxes. I fill one up, toss it on the top of the pile of boxes in my clothes closet, and grab the next box. I should mark them on the outside, but what would the fun be in that? It is particularly challenging when I want or need to find something specific. But nevertheless, I have to say, I always do. And sometimes even more important things I didn't even know I was looking for.

This managed chaos works for me. It is the antithesis of the way my parent's handled their home organization. Maybe it is because they stayed in one place longer than I, or had bigger homes, but they each had their own file cabinets filled with folders that were meticulously titled, containing elements that, not surprisingly, matched their titles. It is one of the reasons I will have plenty to write about for months to come. There's a lot of good things in those files.

I mentioned earlier that my mother kept her calendars and date books from college. She also kept them during certain periods of her life. I found some of these calendars yesterday and thought they told an interesting story. Since it's almost May, I pulled two calendars from her archives for the month of May, in 1953 and 1966. (You need to click on it to enlarge it.)

May is a busy month for our family. Both my older brothers were born in May, as was one of my sisters-in-law, and my maternal grandfather. My parents got married on May 16, on my grandfather's birthday. I am sure my mother had more activities than this calendar above shows, but I thought it was interesting in that it captured the big events: luncheons, parties, showers, rehearsal, wedding. It's fun to see this calendar for the first time and to picture her as a young woman writing them down.

Fast forward 13 years, three children, three states, three houses, two dogs, three cats later...

This calendar doesn't look much different than the calendars my brother and sister-in-law had when their children were the ages my brothers and I were in 1966. Even though we were living during a time where life was safer and you didn't have to worry about playing outside without supervision, it's obvious by looking at this calendar that we often relied on my mother to organize and drive us to all these many activities.

Hey, and since this blog is all about ME, I noticed the 1966 calendar referenced my ballet recital. My mom kept the advertisement for it, which I posted below. I wish I could ask her for a little clarification as it proudly announced that it was "starring Janet Tuccinardi & Bill Bath with Sarah Ambrose, Jody Page and many others," yet....I'm not in the photo. I don't even remember seeing a picture of myself in that costume, but then again, I have many more folders to go through so there's still hope.

I didn't want you to be disappointed about not seeing me in a leotard, so here's a photo of me from another recital where I'm wearing a lobster costume. Doesn't it scream lobster? Now that's a costume I remember!