In preparation of a move in four short weeks, Steve and I are throwing away vast quantities of crap.

IKEA furniture that can't suffer another move. Gone.

Four Boy Scout uniforms that Steve's mom lovingly wrapped in paper. Gone.

A box of baseball trophies from 1979. Gone.

4 boxes of folders of xeroxed articles with notes and underlines used for two dissertations and intended for use in VERY IMPORTANT scholarly books. Gone. 

It's surprising how little we care about this crap that has occupied our home for seven years. We even found one box of stuff that was never unpacked when we moved here seven years ago. Why have we kept all this crap?

We're definitely in a tossing-out sort of mood. Really, all I need in life is my contact case, my iPhone, and the kids. Can't toss out the kids. They have laws. I don't even need my computer, because everything – pictures, address book, drafts of articles — is backed up in virtual space. 

However, in the midst of this mad pitching frenzy this weekend, I came across one box of old letters. Back in the days, children, people wrote letters to each other, instead of texting. Phone calls cost money, so chums didn't have long chats on their cellphones on the way to the Freshman college classes. They wrote letters.

I saved every letter that people sent me and wound them up with string. I briefly waded through the box of old letters yesterday. Should I pitch them or should I send them back to their owners for laughs?  I have letters from my artsy friend, Sue, who sent me funny notes about getting nearly thrown out of Harvard. Her doodles on the margin later appeared on the cover of Harvard Lampoon. I have letters from a friend at West Point detailing the ways that he got around the mandatory drug testing.

I also found at the bottom of the box two letters from a girl who later died at Lockerbie. She was a couple of years younger, so I perhaps too casual with our friendship. She sent me long letters as I went off college, but I was too distracted with college festivities to maintain our friendship. Three years later, she took a flight to Europe for a college travel program and never came back. 

Her family still lives in the area and I spent the weekend wondering if I should track them down and send them the letters. Would they be happy to see a snap shot of their daughter, who they lost so long ago, or would it open old wounds? 

The letters are sitting here on the desk. I still haven't decided what to do. They feel like a horcrux, but a good and honest one. There's a bit of the girl's soul in those envelopes. 

Those letters did put a damper on the mad pitching-frenzy this weekend. I sealed up the box of letters, along with some old diaries with three pages of writing in them and a photo of The Who. They'll make the move with me.