At Large in Ballard by Peggy Sturdivant

Handfuls of my past went out with the recycling cart this morning and were hauled away by 9 a.m., leaving one envelope adrift with tire tracks. I am sorting through boxes in my basement for the first time in almost 20 years, but finding it difficult to live in both the past and the present.

As a writer I've always held onto the written word so I have stacked boxes of notes, story drafts, college binders, newspaper clippings and correspondence. My sorting hasn't reached the big boxes; I'm still working on shoeboxes containing postmarked envelopes and postcards.

Over the weekend I culled pounds of correspondence from the mother lode and added it to the recycling bin, which in turn I wheeled to the curb on Sunday night. The recycling truck came so promptly - how could my past disappear so quickly when I had been holding onto it so long?

In the grand sorting project I've found letters from people that I barely remember: fellow students, co-workers from my first job, thin airmail letters for years following my Junior Year Abroad. Letters written in French that I can no longer read - was I ever that fluent? Sorting by sender I note that the pile from my mother is the largest, each envelope thick with add-ons, each line packed with details about the weather and impediments to getting to the post office. My father's pile is separate, with Retired hand-typed after his name on business letterhead.

I neglect the present life while sorting the past one. We run out of milk and bananas. I forget to start the washing machine and mistake the time for Saturday's soccer game. Reaching into yet another musty box I think about my relationship with the past. It seems we can be nostalgic forever for certain things, our mother's pot roast, the scent of our father's after shave before work, a particular meteor shower on a summer night, a moment of joy. But we hoard only certain memories, like photos where we look especially good. The opportunity to actually reach into our raw source material is terrifying.

How could I have forgotten betraying someone named Buzz? Why did friends continue to write when I was so self-pitying? The only letters I want to re-read are those brimming with the lives of others. Muriel in Missouri turned down six dates in a weekend; two letters later she was marrying at 18. On pink stationary, in practically the same handwriting as my own, my father's mother sends me details of the parallel lives of cousins in Indiana, but in a voice that's kinder than I remembered.

The second largest pile is from my father's mother. My grandfather Teal believed in correspondence as ardently as he believed in music, education, communes, the Friends' Society and cold beer. Once the triage is over I will go back to really read his letters because I didn't appreciate him enough when I was young.

Two rooms are littered with letters; outside the yard is covered with leaves. My final tomatoes go unpicked. It could be the last sunshine but I don't want to stop sorting until the shoeboxes are empty. I can hear neighbors outside, laughter, what sounds like a skateboard. From the window I see a little boy from up the street coasting down the sidewalk on a Big Wheels, his dad jogging along behind him, and behind him his even younger brother. Down and up. Down and up.

Christmas pictures, photos of newborns, foreign postmarks. What to discard, what to keep? Across the street two little brothers are sitting cross legged on the sidewalk, waiting for the mailman as he works his way up the block.

I leave the sorted piles of keepers to rake leaves instead, piling them on the garden beds. A neighbor needs a magazine I've discarded so I tilt the entire recycling cart on its side, climb in and paw through the discarded years, lost friends and endless birthdays. In exchange the neighbor fills my hands with chanterelles.

On Sunday night I find yet another manila envelope of letters in a cranny. I pluck a postcard from the new handful at random - it's postmarked November 1981 with my college address in tentative cursive. In my grandfather's bold print it reads: "Greetings! We conclude that raking leaves is responsible for the beautiful green lawn that we should photograph. Florence is great at the job. We enjoy the sunshine, cutting wood and reading Large Print Library books." I feel suddenly shaky as though ghosts exist. All of my grandfather's letters to date have been written after my grandmother Florence's death, but suddenly she's there raking leaves. They are still living on their own in the little house - after her stroke but they are still living on their own. My grandfather has drawn an arrow to the shaky address and written, "Florence's writing."

I clutch this postcard like the most important piece of paper on earth. They never visited Ballard. My grandparents never saw where I live now. My grandfather died soon after my daughter was born, my grandmother 10 years before, but this moment is why I save letters - so that people I love can reappear like geniis. The recycling truck may take away old papers but not what matters of the past. Just before their initials my grandfather wrote, "We hope the life you're living measures up."

Peggy's e-mail is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com. She writes additional pieces for the Seattle P.I.'s Ballard webtown at http://blog.seattlepi.