Perspicacity

So what do you value? You're surrounded by a lifetime of collections and memories. Various items, small and large, that you've accumulated during your brief time here on earth. Some with an underlying significance that defies monitary value. Some just items of status. Others just items of convenience to facilitate life.

I sat in the middle of the floor in my office, surrounded by memories, gazing upon one item to the next. What will go with me? What can I leave behind? Behind me in the background, the television broadcasted reports of the inevitable disaster that was slowly making its way towards the coast. When the floodwaters hit, as my lifetime of memories and sentimental collections wash away, what will I regret losing the most?

I wished I had bought that SUV instead of my convertible.

Here's a list of items that I took with me:

+ A photoalbum containing childhood pictures of me and my brother dating from the date of our birth to about 1980

+ Naturalization papers, passport, social security card, stock certificates

+ A small clay vase I made for my mother in 1997

+ A pink teddy bear that I've had since I was 2 year old

+ My dad's old manual camera, manufactured in 1945

+ My Minolta

+ My computer's hard drive

+ A watch I bought when I started medschool

+ The various fine pens given to me as gifts

+ Cameron's Textbook of Surgery

I laughed when I put the Cameron's in my car. I never thought I'd see the day when I would choose to save a textbook: My college and medschool diplomas were left hanging on the wall, the leather bound set of encyclopedias left on the bookshelves, the collection of CD's and DVD's left sitting next to my tower of electronic doodads, and my beloved cactus left to weather the storm.