Memory

Just how accurate is one's memory? I wonder about this. My sister sent me a box this week with some items found when cleaning out our family home ( my dad and his new wife are moving and sorting through 40 years of stuff). The box contained a diary I kept while I was an exchange student in Italy in hight school. I was 16. I have been enjoying reading it. I find it amazing the things I forgot compared to what I remembered. I remember it as one of the most wonderful experiences of growing up, and the entire experience changed me in a fundamental way. I had a very loving family and got to know a group of wonderful teenagers while I lived there. It is neat to read the thoughts of that 16 year old I was. I didn't remember I had written the diary and didn't know what happened to it. A friend of mine who had been a exchange student the year before insisted that I keep the diary. I'm so glad I did. It's like stumbling onto a former version of yourself that was kept there to be discovered now 40 years later. WOW.

Sue