More Than a Sign

I'm one of those people who saves just about everything. In fact, in my parents' attic are multiple boxes of papers from my school years, kindergarten through graduate school. My parents are feeling a need to sort through things, so they have started to carry a few boxes down from the attic. They recently decided they'd have me start weeding through my treasures by sorting through a box of my 4th grade papers. I'm not sure why, but Mom announced that I'd start with 4th grade.

Anyway, the contents of my 4th grade box will be the subject of a future blog post, but in the meantime, this particular item, the first thing I pulled out of the box, really struck me. This is a large (probably 16x16 inch) red paper, not really heavy enough to be a poster. It is obviously farming-related, but I haven't a clue where it came from or why it was with my 4th grade papers. While I can remember most of the things I found in the box, this one seems totally foreign to me. And I find it really intriguing seeing this today, as an avid scrapbooker for whom CROP has a very different meaning.

And there's more: A little deeper down in the box were two scrapbooks made from large paper grocery bags, covered with pieces of wrapping paper and loosely tied with yarn. Inside the scrapbooks were pictures and advertisements cut from magazines. Again, I have no recollection of making either of these scrapbooks. But they must be mine. They were in my box.

There is probably no real significance to either of these finds, but to me, they feel like a confirmation that today, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Looking back, the signs really were there, even when I was a fourth grader. I may have ignored the signs then, or maybe they weren't visible to me, but now, as a grown up, I see the signs clearly. It has taken me a long time to get here, but these little clues tell me that maybe, just MAYBE, I'm becoming who I'm really supposed to be.