I”m journaling again at 5 a.m., seems like the first time this year. Why did I stop? It was partly this blog, partly Twitter. Partly wondering if pens (and fountain pens at that) have a place in our world. It seems they still do. There’s something special about the scratch of pen on paper. I turn on my morning music, popular ballads that get my mind running forward on a positive track, and let the ink run onto the page.

Yesterday I went in the garage to pull out an old college transcript so I can apply for alternative teacher certification. As I opened the Steelcase file cabinet where we’ve long kept our papers, I saw my a disappearing type of history: a paper-based record keeping system, linear feet of paper in hanging folders growing dusty, year after year of tax returns, school records, notes my husband took in grad school, and letters to me that go back to when I was in college.

The majority of the letters are from my father, and these have always been rather precious to me. In Fort Worth you’ve got to worry about storage — damp and mold can destroy paper here. I drew a long sigh as I shut the drawer, realizing that I had to get the paper out of the garage if I cared about it. Though nothing but the letters really matters to me. 

My father has told me he has my grandfather’s letters too, a box of them typed on white paper going back fifty years. I decide to move the cabinet into the house, somehow, where it is drier, and tell my father I will keep my grandfather’s letters after he, Dad is gone. And then I pull aside my daughter, who’s up and about taking care of our two 9 week old puppies.

“When I”m gone, keep the letters in the file cabinet, for family history,” I tell her.  She looks at me a little strangely, like “you’re not checking out any time soon,” but nods. If this is to be my only demand, my only legacy, it isn’t too much. Then she goes to take her baby dogs outside for the necessaries. Such is the intersection between the momentary, dog care, and the long-term, family letters,  in the history of a family. And I go back to writing, on paper, freezing this moment in time.