The “Junk” in My Trunk by Anne Michael I've been lugging an old blue, cedar lined trunk everywhere I’ve moved for 25 years. It has served as a coffee table, an end table, a travel trunk, and until I moved to Florida, a repository for winter bedding. In recent years it has resided in the garage and has since Steve and I moved into the home we now live. This trunk is full of treasures I could not bear to throw away, although each time I move I do sort through it, get rid of the junk that invariably gets tossed into the mix or the gizmos that have either lost their appeal or have been squished, broken or mangled. That is until yesterday. My husband, with an eye toward retirement, is in the “beginning to prepare to begin to start” phase of downsizing. He has been gung-ho about cleaning the garage the last two weeks in an effort to prepare for our eventual move to the smaller, less maintenance-intensive home of our retirement dreams. I have no particular sense of urgency since I figure I have at least ten more years of working before I become eligible to retire. That said, however, there was only one thing I had to deal with in the garage—my blue trunk. It was in that dusty old blue trunk that I spent the bulk of the Easter Sunday holiday, going through each piece of the trove to see what should be kept or tossed. It was a task I’d put off for years—and wouldn’t, had I known what I would find. There was a blanket my favorite aunt crocheted for me when I married for the first time at 18 and a handmade quilt, sewn for my oldest daughter, that I’d been saving for a new grandchild, expecting to do only minor repairs. Unfortunately, four children, a multitude of launderings and 25 years in a trunk didn't do it any favors—the batting was non-existent and the fabric in tatters from the heat. I discovered report cards, the camera my parents used to record their honeymoon adventures, and the clarinet I played through school that is now 70 years old and looks it. Wrapped in a yellowed plastic bag was the veil from my first communion almost 45 years earlier. To my utter delight there were books, like my signed copy of Erma Bombeck’s first book that I’d long wondered to whom I’d loaned it. It was thrilling—a bit like finding buried treasure—to discover I still had it since the world can no longer be treated to her elegantly whimsical writing. The hours passed with delicious leisure as I pored through old recipes and cards handmade by my children over the 20 years of raising them. Construction paper confections, once adorned with glue and glitter, brought tears to my eyes and a pang of love and memory. To my everlasting joy, I discovered letters from friends that I’d forgotten I’d kept. Letters buried deep in the trunk from my French pen-pal during junior high school spoke of a piece history specially mine. I discovered markers of the road I’ve traveled in the form of a lifetime of letters from people I’d corresponded with from the age of 12. I found the scrapbook I made in my early teens, full of Polaroid snapshots, receipts for the first sewing machine I’d ever purchased for a whopping $50.00, which at the time seemed like thousands. There were so many “firsts” in the book too, like a long cancelled savings passbook, photos of my first dance, and the lottery ticket from the first lottery ever held in New Jersey. The pages that used to be creamy beige are now brown, crispy and so fragile they crumble with just a breath. To my mortification and astonishment I found handwritten poems and stories, some so bad as to defy description and others far better done than I had imagined I could ever create. The sojourn of the day covered 40 years yet I never left home. The task from which I had shied for so many years turned out to be a magnificent and memorable trip down a lane cobbled of memory and washed with tears of loss and my heart’s pleasure. The trunk is now empty. The letters have been safely stored in a large flowered hat box in my closet along with the few other things with which I could not bear to part. The old trunk, which has seen far better days with its vinyl cladding now tattered and scuffed, the imitation brass finish on the hinges, hasps and lock blackened with age was dragged out to the trash last evening in anticipation of “garbage day.” It looks so impossibly small out there in the open air where it once seemed so enormous inside the garage. I find myself hoping someone will rescue the trunk before waste management collects it, and that they fill it with the memorabilia of their own years. I love the poetry of it. I know it’s only a trunk, but there surely must have been some magic in it for me to have traveled more than 40 years back in time in a mere afternoon. At age 10, Anne realized she was never going to get to be Miss America since reading a book was not an acceptable talent. So she went on to get a job and raise a family. Along the way, she fixed meals, picked up toys, helped with homework, and collected a drawer full of rejection slips for her “great American novel.” It was not all bad, however, since she ended up wallpapering a closet with them. She currently designs and creates greeting cards for her tiny company, The Frog Prints, LLC, and also works full-time as a Training Specialist. Anne is currently tethered to reality by a loving spouse, two dogs, one cat and the occasional hurricane that blows through Florida, although falling headlong and happily into a book is still her favorite “talent.” She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it