Hidden Relics

For the last thirty years, I have left messages and whatnots inside walls and other spaces within buildings I have worked on.  When building my house and cabin, I dropped things in hollow spaces and wrote notes constantly as I brought the structures from the ground to finish.

I have continued this practice while remodeling the house.

Yesterday, with help from my brother-in-law, Terry, I finished laying down the subflooring for my sunroom.  After screwing down the first sheet of plywood, I said to Terry, “We need to leave something in the floor.”

Between the foam I laid on the concrete and the plywood, I had a half-inch space for placing items.  Almost instantly, I thought about the various pairs of chopsticks in my kitchen silverware drawer.

Uyen’s chopsticks.

I have not used any of them since her passing ten years ago.

I placed a pair of Uyen’s chopsticks and a receipt from Home Depot for the flooring materials atop the foam in one of the available spaces.  My sister Debbie clipped the banner from the Independent Record newspaper (which is a relic I still receive) and added that.

A few minutes later, Terry and I dropped the next cut of plywood over our offerings.

Here’s to the future! 

      

Chopsticks

Chopsticks and Receipt

From a Distance

—Mitchell Hegman