Confessions of a hoarder. A memory hoarder, that is.

I have this weird fascination with the past.

In a way, I’m sort of a memory hoarder.

I keep plane tickets, seashells, letters and photos, newspaper clippings, diaries from when I was five years old. (Once I even saved my brother’s hair that fell to the kitchen floor when my mom gave him a hair cut… don’t judge)

Some leaves I found during the summer.

Some birch bark, a rock, a queen bee cell from a beehive.

My plane ticket to Machu Picchu last summer!

My older brother and me at home in Minnesota, 1995

Sports day at school in England! Apparently I was the slowest kid, finishing last. But my egg didn't break!

But it’s not just my own life I’m obsessed with documenting; I can spend hours flipping through family photos and letters, squinting at the blurry faces and reading the notes on the back.

I guess I’ve just always felt like there is more to my own self that I don’t know about. As if, where I come from and who my family members are and what they did holds some great secret to my identity that is just waiting for me to stumble upon inside the sentence of a letter or a face in a photograph. 

My father’s side of the family has been especially mysterious to me.

Because my parents are British, only immigrating 20ish years ago, all my extended family lives in England. So, I never really became too close with my paternal grandparents since we weren’t able to visit them that often. 

But two years ago, my dad's dad passed away. When my parents returned from the funeral, they brought back with them photos from my granddad’s house, a few of distant relatives from the early 1900s, but mostly of my grandfather and grandmother from when they were teenagers up until now.

These photos were golden.

My grandma, Rita. I think she's around my age in this photo.

In Paris...not quite sure when.

South Africa...probably in the '70s

Mystery boys. On the back is written 'with love to Rita.  From John, Pete, and Len'. Potential love interests of my young grandmother??

After I found these photos, I learned even more from my dad: my Grandparents grew up in the east end of London in the 1950s, that they had been married before they married each other, and because of this, moved to South Africa soon after to start a new life together.  (I also learned that my great-grandfather did some black market trading during the Second World War. SKETCHY.)

I guess I'm still waiting for whatever this great mystery to my identity is (it's probably just some crazy idea created in my mind, anyway). But, for now, I'll stick with flipping my way through these photographs, and saving some of my own to leave for another weird person obsessed with the past.