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Found my great-grandma's diary from 1932 in a box of old linens
I was helping my mom clean out the attic last Tuesday and we opened this old cedar chest full of tablecloths. Buried under a stack was a small leather book, her daily journal from when she was 21. She wrote about saving up $7 for a new coat and taking the streetcar in St. Louis. It's wild to hold her actual thoughts from that year. Has anyone else found a personal writing heirloom like that?
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nancy_green21d ago
Oh man, @foster.dylan I was thinking the same thing about that coat price. But your story hits hard about the messy side of this. I found my grandmother's recipe box a few years back and thought it would be sweet, but it turned into a whole thing. There were notes in the margins about who stole her best casserole dish at a church potluck and which cousin she stopped talking to in 1965. My mom got all upset because she remembered that cousin fondly, and suddenly we were arguing about family history that didn't even involve me. It's like you open a time capsule but instead of nice memories you get old grudges and drama you never asked for.
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My aunt found my grandpa's old letters from the war and honestly it just felt like a burden. We had to decide what to keep, who got what, and it stirred up old family arguments about his second marriage. It's not all magical connection, sometimes it's just messy paperwork and old sadness you have to sort through. Why do we think digging up the past is always a good thing?
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