Rudi and I spent tonight sorting through old papers. They’d been stuffed into the space Rudi’s desk and we were hoping to repurpose that space for something else. Mostly it’s what you expect to find when going through old stuff — outdated magazine offers, charitable requests, old bank statements. But I knew there were also four containers under there that held important papers of mine.

Sure, I figured some of them would have become things I didn’t need — pay stubs and the like — but I also knew there were letters and cards and things I wanted to hold onto.

So when Rudi wanted to head to bed, I told him to go since I had to tackle those last boxes myself anyway.

Boxes one and two held the stuff I expected. Sure there were some things that could be pared down, but I was unsurprised by what I found and just mostly tidied and consolidated.

Box three held … junk mail. It was a huge let down. I mean, it’s good because I don’t need to keep nearly anything that was in there, but still. It’s hardly what I was looking forward to.

So, I admit it was with a little worry that I pulled the last box toward me. Would it also hold the remnants of some last minute cleaning?

The box did not hold important papers.

Instead, as I lifted the lid, I was met with the smell of rosewater.

It’s a box of little items from Connecticut that I didn’t want to lose — an old perfume bottle (thus the scent). The seahorse pendants that came from necklaces my grandmother brought me back from Hawaii when I was small. The charms to my charm bracelet. Some of my favorite necklaces from high school. A suncatcher from Karen. A broken keychain from Grey Kitten. (No, GK, not that first one. That one is in my parents’ basement.) A birthday card from coworkers a decade ago. The first amethyst ring my parents gave me when I was a kid. A flower pin from an elementary school friend.

This is why people save things. Little mementos from their lives that wouldn’t mean anything to other people. Even Rudi looking through this box probably wouldn’t know the significance of two thirds of it. But my looking through it tonight took me away to people and places and times that matter a great deal to me.

Most of my treasures remain scattered — in boxes around the Burrow and in my parents’ basement. I wonder if I would feel more whole if they were in one place where, on the days when I’m feeling lonely and lost, I could just open a box and follow a rose-scented path back through my own life.