Yesterday I volunteered to help clean and organize a closet at my kids’ school. This is exactly the sort of volunteer gig I like; I would much rather sort through piles of toner cartridges than have anything to do with the carnival.

Shoved in a low corner was small box labeled “archives.” I was surprised to find six beautiful photo albums inside, the oldest dating back to 1931.

These albums contain a lot of what you would expect: pages full of class pictures, event invitations, and newspaper clippings. But there are some surprises too. There’s a copy of a questionnaire sent home to parents about their child’s sleeping habits, TV habits, and allowance. Copies of the PTA budget. And my personal favorite: a letter sent from the principal spelling out the circumstances under which students were allowed to eat lunch at school rather than go home for lunch (subzero weather or with special teacher permission only).

That letter was sent in 1955, and back then it must have been quite normal for students to go home for their lunch. But whoever saved that letter must have had a sense of history. Did she know how much the world would change in the next seventy-five years? That we don’t expect children to walk anywhere by themselves anymore? That there are very few stay-at-home parents left who are around to make lunch for their school-age children in the middle of the day?

She could not have known how shocking that letter would be to the PTA parents of 2023, but she chose to save it anyway. She also thought someone might want to know that the entire PTA budget for the 1951-1952 school year was $993.50, and you know what? I do want to know that.

So now I’m trying to wrap my head around what it means to have a sense of history. I think it has something to do with appreciating the mundane details of our daily lives. Something to do with recognizing the impermanence of it all.

And yet… I am still going to recycle pretty much every piece of paper that comes into my house. So much for my sense of history.