Scraps of Paper
I was having my annual clear out of the paperwork on my desk. Getting rid of the rubbish and dust that accumulates, ready for a polish and clean of all surfaces.
Going through the trays where I file ‘stuff to do’ I can across an letter from Rosemary, my brothers widow. With a brief note she enclosed two much creased and fragile slips of paper.
My brother had obviously found them after my mother died and he, like her, saved them. The papers themselves were worthless but the sentiments expressed were clearly priced beyond measure.
The first was a ‘joke’ cheque sent to my mother when my brother was 13 ¾ years old. Shades of Adrian Mole. It is a 56 year old piece of whimsy, signed by him in his best handwriting(?) and possibly as a christmas present. Mum would have been so pleased to receive such a gift for she treasured and kept it so long.
The other is also a cheque – a real one, and I know that it is from the first cheque book I ever owned. Again it is addressed to my mother.
The cheque was issued by the Riggs National Bank in Washington D.C. And looking at it I see that it is the Farmers and Mechanics Branch. Well I was a mechanic at the time so it was appropriate.
At the time I had only been in America about six months so it was sent with a bit of swank on my part. If I remember I was trying to save and send money home for mum to put in a bank for me.
A closer look at the date reminds me it is about six days before I met Iris forty nine and a half years ago. (A group of ex-pats all had a meal at a Dutch restaurant on the 26th of September, it was later demolished to make way for the Watergate complex – but that is another story). Riggs Bank is also no more being mixed up with money laundering and various other nefarious deeds, sounds familiar! So my scrap of paper has lived on even though the bank is no more.
Where has all this time gone? All that remains are our memories triggered by two small scraps of paper. In twenty years time will a series of zeros and ones do the same.
As this, and my generation, use the internet in all its manifestations I do wonder if the written word will falter and disappear – I feel that this will rob us all of a very personal skill that needs to be encouraged.
A draft version of this piece was hand-written in a real notebook. I find that a pen or pencil can keep up with my thoughts much better than a screen and keyboard.
This is not knocking technology I just use any tool that is appropriate to the task.
As to which record will disappear first, I leave that to posterity. . .