I have admitted before to being a packrat. Can't help it; I come from a long line of them on my mother's side. There are occasional moments when I wish I weren't, though, so that I wouldn't have so much to rearrange when something new and large moves into the place.

But being related to packrats has its blessings. For instance, a few years ago, my great-aunt gave me an envelope filled with things that were all about my history. There were clippings pertaining to my mother's early school days, when someone winning a scholastic contest at the classroom level was a big enough piece of news to merit telling the town.

And there were letters my grandmother had written to various members of the family. My absolute favorite of those was written to her mother-in-law. In it, she asked after "your dear little daughter" who had just turned three. That dear little daughter was the aunt who gave me the envelope. She was four years older than my mother. My grandfather was at the upper end of the family age range; she was the baby.

The things that I treasure are usually not monetarily valuable. There are all sorts of things in my apartment that didn't cost me anything, but that I consider priceless. One of those is a handwritten copy of my father's resume that he had done as a draft before typing it. It had been done to give someone introducing him as a speaker at some civic event some requested biographical information. The last thing on the list was my arrival. That's the only piece of paper I know of with my name completely written out in his handwriting.

That piece of potentially scrap paper is framed and has a place of honor in my living room.