There are three old black and white photographs and a utility bill from the city of Pleasanton (January, 1981 for $31.27). There’s a yellowed envelope with a letter written in beautiful spidery penmanship. (It was delivered with a five cent stamp.) There’s a boarding pass for Northwest Airlines, a lottery ticket, and 43 “official” bookmarks.
I have this pile of things I collected in 2011. Things left in books. We have a book business and buy boxes of books from estate sales. It always interests me to see what people have tucked into books and forgotten.
There’s a 1982 map of The University of California at Berkeley, a little tract from 1976 (Knowing God Personally), a birthday card, and a cigarette quiz booklet published in 1967. Most amazingly, we found 3 twenty-dollar travelers’ checks from 1964.
Did the man who lost the traveler’s checks get his money back?
Did anyone miss any of this stuff?
In this quiet week as we close 2011, I want to take some time to flip through The Book of My Year and see if there’s anything important I have forgotten.
Is there any trash I need to get rid of? Are there any pages I need to reread? I marked certain pages for some reason…
Today is a good day to look over 2011 one more time. Volume 2012 will soon be in our hands.
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Welcome! My name is Andrena Paladini and this is a blog about family and love and faith and fun. I call it Paladini Potpie because a potpie is like an adventure in a crust. You never know what might come up, but it’s always going to be good!
Think of the best potpie you’ve ever eaten…hot flaky crust holding a rich savory sauce and all kinds of pieces of meat and vegetables…and who knows what?
As a family, we’ve chosen to live within the parameters of God’s love and protection. This is the crust of our Paladini Potpie. The crust never changes. Within this crust, the savory sauce of family love binds it all together. That is also fairly constant. But beyond the crust and the sauce we can add just about anything!
Good ideas come our way and we’ve adopted and adapted them to add to what John calls our treasure box of memories. These stories and ideas from John’s treasure box of memories are the ingredients I’m putting into our Paladini Potpie.
(Okay, so this ridiculous mixing of metaphors about treasure boxes and potpies is exactly what I’m talking about. Silly and ungrammatically correct. But both illustrations work… so we’ll mix them together and it’ll be just fine!)
John and I have been married for 30 years. Our children have wonderfully doubled in number since David married Amanda, Monica married Dan, and Matthew married Sarah.
And the newest little treats that have been added to our potpie are six adorable grandchildren - Ethan, Angelina, Nathan, Audrey, Maleia and Caleb!
I hope you’ll subscribe to my Paladini Potpie blog, and keep up with all the fun new ingredients I add. Hopefully you’ll enjoy our stories and ideas, and find something you’ll want to put into your own potpie! Bon appétit!
Paladini Potpie 
December 28, 2011 at 9:39 am
When I go back thru my books, I find things like that. I even leave things in my Bible. I have a hankerchief that a church in Arkansas annoted with oil and sent to me when I was so sick in the hospital. I can’t throw it away, so I leave it in that Bible.
December 28, 2011 at 11:48 am
Andrena, I loved this reflection and how you tied it in with the internal “housekeeping” we need to do. In cleaning out my Mom’s stuff after she moved to the nursing home, I find many of the items you mentioned stuck in books. How clever of you to comment on what we all see but ignore. Happy New Year to you and yours.
January 4, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Reminds me of the puzzle you found under the sofa!!!!!