I have always been someone who keeps things.

Not everything. Not carelessly. But intentionally. Before something leaves my hands, I have to understand what it carries with it. I have to feel the weight of the memory attached.

I have boxes of photographs, thousands of them, taken long before phones lived in our pockets. I have greeting cards saved from birthdays, holidays, ordinary moments when someone took the time to write a few words and send them to me. I have letters folded and refolded so many times the creases have softened. I have old address books, including one that once belonged to my mother. Names written in pencil. Phone numbers crossed out. Handwriting that no longer exists anywhere else.

Some of the things I’ve kept would look unimportant to someone else. A handwritten recipe on an index card. A note tucked into a book. A phone number written on the back of an envelope. But to me, they hold people. Not in a sentimental way, but in a grounded one. I can look at my grandmother’s careful cursive and feel her presence immediately. Her handwriting alone is enough to take me back to her kitchen, her voice, the way she stood at the counter.

Books do this for me too. I can pick one up and remember exactly when I got it. Where I was living. What I was going through. How it made me feel when I read it. The object becomes a marker, not just of time, but of who I was then.

I don’t throw things away quickly. I need to sit with them. To decide whether the memory they carry has already been absorbed, or whether it still needs a place to live. Some things earn their permanence quietly.

I think many people used to live this way. Not intentionally. Just naturally. Objects stayed because they meant something. And meaning was reason enough.