The painters at Mom's have been picking off wallpaper with their fingernails, God bless them. (And I am sure God will: this team of two play soft Christian rock while working.) The house is full of sun. All manner of sins have been painted away. You can no longer tell which side of the bed Dad smoked in. You would think the thermostat had always been mounted three feet off the floor. Mirrors are off the walls and you can see layers of paint never seen since the sixties.
And.... the mirror is off the wall in the bathroom and the time capsule Mom left is exposed.
The BIG Reveal! Duh Duh Dunnnnnnn.
A button, reading "What's the sense in having a cat if you don't torment it?"
A pin, made in New Zealand, which is a native leaf specially treated with silver paint. I imagine I could add a newpaper article about the Christchurch time capsule they found after the earthquake. However, it might make my future homeowners jealous.
A bottle opener from Fairbanks Alaska, and the receipt for what the wallpaper in the room cost. (I removed that, because that $1,000 wallpaper is probably off the walls this very evening. Without the wallpaper, that item would be irrelevant. It would clash next to the timely relevance of the other items.)
A grocery receipt from 1991. Cascade $2.99. Is that good? No idea. When this is discovered again, I hope that delights someone.
A measuring tape to show the antiquated way we measured things back in 1991.
And, finally, something kind of interesting. It isn't from 1991, in fact, I have no idea where this came from. As far as I know, Mom or Dad never went up in the Empire State Building. But yet, here are a bookmark and a souvenir receipt.
At one point Tammy, the painter's assistant, found me and asked, "Did you grow up in this house?"
"Yes, since I was 11."
"I found a couple of things pushed in the back of the closet shelves."
One was a Blues hockey ticket from 1971. One seat: $4. That went right into the Time Capsule purse.
The other thing?
You'll have to guess until tomorrow.
I don't need to tell you this, but your mom was great.
Posted by: Becs | March 02, 2011 at 03:44 AM
I have drawers that are full of stuff just like that. "I can't throw this away, it's a souvenir/reminds me of a specific thing/might be useful. What if I *need* a bookmark/pin about cats/measuring tape". And then I throw a receipt in there, too, because I'm lazy.
I can't imagine how she got it in the wall, though.
Posted by: Tami | March 02, 2011 at 11:08 AM
Ooo, I didn't know your mom so I'm totally qualified to guess. Was it a knee high stocking? They can be lost in all kinds of interesting places.
Posted by: Amy in StL | March 02, 2011 at 01:44 PM
Becs - it never hurts to hear it again.
Tami - I took off the mirror to do the wallpaper and found the hole. The wallpaper had to dry till next week, and by that time she'd pulled together the trove of treasure. I banged the nail in the stud, hung up the "time capsule" and put the mirror back.
Amy in StL - Bzzz! Wrong!
Posted by: TheQueen | March 02, 2011 at 11:21 PM
So you were in on the time capsule? Why did I think that it was a surprise?
Posted by: Tami | March 03, 2011 at 07:28 AM
Tami- Now that I've seen the purse and the hole, all I remember is hanging it up. I do not remember assembling the contents. Oh, and Mom did go to Niagara Falls when she was 20, so she could have seen the Empire State building at the same time.
Posted by: TheQueen | March 03, 2011 at 07:48 AM