Democrat-Gazette online

Someone at the university decided our offices needed repainting and new carpet. I agree, but such updating requires that I clean out my office, or at least box it up so furniture can be moved into the hall. There is a lore around offices of professors, particularly those of us in the arts, that conjures images of books from floor to ceiling. A million pens. Sticky notes. Shards of newspaper, handwritten letters, pages of magazines, fortune cookie innards. Anything with words that might spark inspiration. Stacks of papers collecting dust. Think Dumbledore. The Paper Chase. Doctor Who. And then scramble those with a mother of four and aunt of three who also writes books and newspaper columns.

I never really have taken anything out of my office in 17 years; just added. So taking things down from the walls meant holding in my hands a pilgrim my niece Madeline colored for me when she was in first grade. Madeline graduates from UCA in December. It meant carefully un-taping the newspaper clipping that announced Grace as National Merit finalist when she was in high school. She is an attorney now.

There was a family tree Harper made in third grade--he's a dental student today--and another newspaper clipping from when........

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