One thing I'm very glad I did...
My Mom went in for bypass surgery - I think around 1985. I started seriously thinking I'd lose her. I bought her one of those books with blank pages. You see, whenever I went home to visit, she'd occasionally start telling me stories about her childhood or some other time in her past. She never seemed to talk about that sort of thing when I was growing up, so the stories were new to me. I asked her to write down her memories in the book when she though of something.

Well, she wrote a couple of things about her childhood. There are a few poems in there as well. The bulk of the stories are about me when I was little.

There's one main reason I can never seem to finally unpack things. It takes me forever to get through one box of old stuff because I have to take handle each thing and remember it. I have to look at each photo and look through every book.

Rick, we had a non-heirloom piano when I was growing up. We sold it, and my father helped move it. He came back nearly apopleptic with laughter. Seems the truck went up a hill and the piano didn't. I was very upset about it, and REALLY mad my Dad was laughing about it while describing the incident in detail, with hand gestures and sound effects. My Mom thought it was hilarious too. I got my sense of humor from them, and it was a darned fine gift.