ring moments

I have been doing some traveling lately

while digging through the 28 years of accumulated stuff in the crawl space of our home I came across boxes of papers, pictures and letters which I had forgotten were hiding there

there was my dad's intelligence log from the war
pages and pages and pages of his 5 year journey through hell
words and sentences had been carefully cut out, very precisely
I suppose by a censor
so I had to guess some locations and events

there were his maps with blue stars scattered throughout
and scattered among the blue stars
were drops of red blood

there was a box of letters my dad had written to his parents
every word written on blue thin paper
inscribed in red on the top
"from the field"

each one had been carefully kept
and so I was able to read
his very personal five year story

and I cannot even imagine the words not able to be written

there are stamps from countries that no longer exist

and then there are the pictures
most of people I never knew
some have names
many have not

and there are the landing papers
of my grandfather's father
(or perhaps it is his grandfather
I have not yet figured it out)
chronicaling his first steps on American soil in 1815

there are wedding certificates
birth certificates
and death certificates

all telling a story
and these are all pieces of my story

I heard an illustration a few days ago
about the rings of a tree trunk
how each year is marked by a ring
and each new ring surrounds all the previous rings
a ring is never lost

how our lives
are are made up of all our rings
the good ones
and the not so good ones

the story of my life has been enlarged now
with all these new rings inside

it is important to explore our rings
to fully understand who we are

it is an interesting journey
I recommend it