postcards.

A few days ago Kevin and I sat ourselves down in the spare room and forced ourselves to sift through boxes and bookshelves, crammed with so many things and memories we had been packing, unpacking, and packing again every time we move. While we're pretty good about throwing away things we really don't need (I cringe every time I see a preview for the show "Hoarders," and I've never been able to watch a complete episode), there was a lot of physical and emotional weight to lose. Notebooks from high school, textbooks from college, silly notes and photographs from so many roommates. The Chiquita banana keychain my father had given me got to stay, and so did a Coke bottle from Italy, but a stack of coasters went into the junk pile along with a handful of floppy disks.

Kevin had to confront a tall pile of music books, while my biggest challenge was a stack of boxes full of cards. I've always loved saving cards. As a sensitive person, a writer, and a very devoted pen-pal, letters and cards have always been very important to me. In my mind, throwing away a card was like erasing the sentiments inside, as if they'd never happened, as if the memory no longer existed.

But goodness, I had a LOT of cards.

So I got ruthless.

Stack of wedding cards? In the trash. Birthday cards and graduation cards and sympathy cards and thank you cards? In the trash. A few made it out alive, if the card was written by a person who usually never wrote, or it was a particularly poignant time in my life that I had no other way of remembering. But I just couldn't keep them all. We are moving on with our lives, and I can't keep toting around boxes of cards from people who are very much still a part of my current life.

And then I got to the postcards. A friend studying abroad in England, another writing from Ireland. A Spanish postcard that simply said, "I made it!" after a friend completed the Camino de Santiago. Postcards from my sister, who spent a year living in Okinawa.

"The thing about postcards," I said to Kevin, "is that even though they're cool to look at, they're always about someone else's memories."

I haven't been to England, or Ireland, or Japan. Reading about the adventures my friends and sister were having was exciting, but never personally meant anything to me. I was happy for them, and loved receiving postcards, but it wasn't my life. It was theirs.

Under the postcards was a stack of letters in long brown envelopes. The handwriting was familiar, and the return address was written in Japanese. My dear friend Justin, who I've known since college, spent two years living in Japan and teaching English with the JET program. We were great pen-pals, and I immediately read through all his old letters and postcards. He wrote me about the hard time he was having adjusting to a totally new culture, the freedom of living somewhere totally new, the struggles he faced while opening himself up to be who he really is. He wrote of the best times, the darkest times, and referenced the letters I'd sent and the special things I'd mailed him (Girl Scout cookies, a valentine, and a t-shirt that read, "You had me at konichiwa").

He had also sent postcards from his journeys around the country, and commented on how beautiful Japan was, and how people stared at him when he was running, and how he didn't know what he would do next with his life. I remembered receiving his postcards and letters and feeling lucky. It was less about hearing stories of Japan - after all, my sister had lived there, and I could read about Japan in a book - and more about feeling trusted with his feelings, the way he was experiencing a new world, the person he hoped to become, the fears he had about hiding his true self any longer.

I've read and re-read these letters over the years, but until the night we cleaned out the box of letters I didn't realize that what Justin had really sent me was a diary. And as much as I felt honored to be the recipient of this diary, as much as I enjoyed feeling needed and trusted, I realized that these letters weren't about me. They weren't my memories, my feelings, or my experiences. They weren't my struggles, my pain, my accomplishments. They were Justin's.

And then it was obvious that I couldn't throw them away.

I asked Justin if he wanted the letters back. There was no pressure, I assured him, since I had no plans to throw them away and I would keep them safe forever if I had to. But if he wanted them, I felt they really belonged to him.

He made a joke. "They're important to have for when somebody writes a biography of me!" And then he seriously told me he would love to have them.

So they are now bundled up, on their way to New York City, where the recipient is a strong, self-aware, talented man who continues to grow, change, and value himself for who he has become.

While part of me is sad to see the letters go, I feel an incredible sense of peace in sending these memories home. Perhaps they were only meant to come to me for a short while, to rest and hide while Justin found his way. I hope I gave them the solace they needed, and I hope when Justin opens up his own letters, he feels as honored as I did the day they first arrived in my mailbox.