The Muffin Wrapper

It’s all stuff and things that have been collected in now two boxes.  Some are papers. Some look like junk, but for various reasons I saved them and they serve as external memories.  But to what end?  Why hang on to these things? I’ve been telling myself for years that they hold stories.  So with NaNoWriMo November 2020 I made a start.  I used the free public scanner at one of Milwaukee Public Library’s branches (all the MPL locations have free scanners) or I have taken pictures when using the scanner was not possible.  There is no particular order.  Just whatever I pull out of the box. Each has its own story, assuming I remember what it is.

My plan is to share an item or two and what I remember of it each week in this blog.

The Muffin Wrapper

Description:

blue used muffin wrapper folded into a tight triangle with pin hole in ruffled edge.

Story:

I grew up in a traditional home.  Mom was a housewife,  Dad was a pastor and he was the man of the house.  If he called, you came.  He would sit in his Lay-z-boy and if he needed something he would call.  Our house had mostly linoleum floors so voices carried.    Before we had a TV with remote control it was not unusual for him to call and you to come and be stuck in the living room flipping channels for him.  We had limited stations and I often committed the TV schedule to memory so I could let him know what was on a station if we encountered a commercial. If he was eating a snack he would call you to take the dishes to the kitchen for him.  Anyway this happened sometime in the late 1980s.  I was in high school and Dad was sitting in his chair eating a homemade muffin.  No idea what sort of muffin, but he ate it, and in his usual fastidious manor had finished it and folded the wrapper and folded it again and made it form a tight triangle.  Then he called.  I came and he handed it to me saying, “Ruth, a gift for you.”  His intention was that I take it to the kitchen and toss it in the trash, but I was a very sarcastic teen and by this point would even dare to tease my father so in my most sarcastic voice I replied  “Really, for me?  Thank you Dad.  I will treasure it always.”  I then went not to the kitchen but to my bedroom where I used a push pin and added it to my bulletin board. 

The bulletin board in my sisters room was filled with awards and certificates, but I did not have so many accolades and had grown very cynical about awards so in high school I changed board to fill it with buttons and art work and all sorts of random colorful bits, like ribbon bows that I took off of Easter bunnies, or the beaded bells that my Grandma made.  So here it is more than 30 years after he ate that muffin, it survived about a dozen moves including a house fire. I still have it. The muffin wrapper.  Perhaps the most treasured muffin wrapper in the world.