I returned home after taking my daughter to school, to find my wife sitting on the floor surrounded by photos of all shapes and color, most of them many years old and curling around the edges.  How precious these rare paper pictures.  She was emptying an antique wooden chest we’d kept since our marriage.  It had belonged to her grandfather who used it for hand tools.  We used it for memories.

Planning to sell it at her yard sale, she placed it by the door.  I noticed it on my way out and had a brainstorm.  “I’m taking this trunk to my office,” I told her, and she agreed with an eye roll and a shrug.  She was ready to part with it.  I had some ideas.  I planned on using it as office furniture and also as a “prop” in my counseling practice.  It’s been fascinating to work with my clients around a simple basic inquiry:  “what’s in your trunk?”  The soft, battered edges and deep brown wood tones of the actual trunk invite a special reverie and a deep remembering.

We all have a “trunk”.  A metaphorical trunk.  A place inside us containing memories that are sometimes vague, and yet affect us profoundly in our daily lives.  Marriage memories.  Childhood memories.  Memories of being bullied.  Memories of losing a loved one.  In the sanctuary of therapy, it’s possible to remember the sweet and sometimes bitter past that so affects our daily lives.  Recalling these memories, going back and letting them touch us once again can be a profoundly cathartic and therapeutic experience.

I remember being 9 years old, sitting in the vinyl back seat of a ’59 Chevy, looking over my Dad’s shoulder as he drove our family in a funeral procession for my Mom’s parents who died in a car crash.  Silent tears wet his face.  He looked straight ahead and said nothing.  He just held my Mom’s hand.  She sat stone-like, as in a dream.  A nightmare.  That morning I saw my father’s tears as strength.  His grief as a painful, but heroic process of empathy.  I saw a real man.

Also in my “trunk” are memories of my grandparents and their home near Fort Walton Beach.  The smells of cakes baking, mixed with the subtle scent of the ocean, pine trees and sandy soil can quickly bring me a deep feeling of safety and warmth.  My grandparents’ tiny home was a haven in the storms of my parents’ early marriage.  My brother and I stayed there a lot and from them I learned about faith.  About love and about peace.  These bittersweet memories from my own trunk are a source of great joy and also profound sorrow.  And a deeper understanding of myself.

In the words of an ancient Scottish proverb on memories of the past…”take a cup of kindness yet and of auld lang syne.”  May the holidays bring you warmth and happiness and goodwill.