The Power of the Unlikely Time Capsule
As I recently discovered, even the most random-seeming artifact can unlock a series of potent memories.
I was recently helping my mom clean out a dresser drawer, which was filled with jewelry she no longer wears and other detritus. At the back of the drawer was an unremarkable-looking women’s wallet, which Mom said she didn’t recognize. It had a few zippered compartments, one of which contained the slip of paper shown above — a receipt for a two-door Hotpoint refrigerator delivered to a Mrs. Lewkowitz in the Long Island town of Patchogue on August 7th, 1975.
Mrs. Lewkowitz was my grandmother — my father’s mother1 — and Patchogue Gardens was the apartment complex where she lived when I was growing up, so the wallet must have belonged to her. She died in the fall of 1980, five years after the refrigerator delivery. My parents must have thought that my mom might one day use the wallet, so they apparently stowed it in the back of the drawer with the jewelry and other accessories, where it remained for another 46 years. During that time, my parents moved to a retirement community (2004), my father died (2009), my mom moved to a smaller retirement apartment (2010), and then she moved again to assisted living (2015). Each time, the dresser moved with her; each time, the wallet was inside the dresser drawer and the fridge receipt was inside the wallet, waiting to be discovered.