Started it! Whew. Here we go.
The Stories They Left Behind
Chapter One: The Boxes
I never imagined that cleaning out old boxes would become a journey through generations of my family’s history.
At first, it was just stuff. Old papers, photographs, letters, Bibles, school memories, and things that had been tucked away for years. Some belonged to my mother. Others came from relatives whose lives I knew only through stories.
But the more I opened, the more I began to wonder.
Who held these papers before me? Who carefully saved that photograph? Who wrote those words, and what was happening in their life when they did?
My name is Kim. I was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1967. My journey eventually brought me to a small town in Alabama, where I raised a family and made a life of my own.
I am a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, an Army veteran, and now, unexpectedly, the keeper of pieces of my family’s past.
My mother’s family takes me back through the mountains of Colorado to small communities in Ontario, Canada. There are Barnharts, Tobins, Whartons, and stories I am only beginning to understand.
Some of the things I’ve found are handwritten. Some are sewn together with thread. Others were tucked into an old, unmarked bag alongside family Bibles. I don’t know who gathered all these things or why they saved them.
And perhaps that’s what makes me want to know more.
Because somewhere between their lives and mine are stories that deserve to be told.
I don’t have all the answers. I may never have them.
But I have the boxes.
And I’m opening them, one at a time
