Cancelled Checks

Cancelled Checks

How will I remember my past now that the bank doesn’t send back the cancelled checks? I’ll have only those piles of photos as memory jogs and visual sticky-notes. But photos are often staged and mostly taken on special occasions—birthdays and graduations and weddings and reunions. But most of real life is everyday—grocery shopping and buying new shoes for school and paying for braces and the new roof and piano lessons and school pictures.

I’ve always loved looking back over the cancelled checks at the end of the year. Even in that short time, I’ll have forgotten to remember that my niece turned 16 and got a check from me, or that my lab test turned out to be normal and so the check written to the lab was written in gratitude and relief.

Most people would probably think I save way too many of these small same-size pieces of paper. I have 35 years worth of “special” cancelled checks. The check to the Unitarian minister who performed the wedding ceremony, the checks to the divorce lawyer. The check to the hospital where my son was born. The check for the closing costs on my first house. Checks to pay for flying lessons and karate and basketball camp. To pay off my college loans, to help out my daughter, my son. Checks for airline tickets, back before everyone used a credit card. In fact, I’ve been tempted to keep credit card receipts for the same reason I kept cancelled checks. But I’ve resisted. One off-beat paper-collecting obsession is enough in one lifetime, I think.