“What’s that smell?”

My daughter asked as we walked into a dim corner of our basement, where a smell lingered of distant memories.

“It’s history … your history,” I told her, trying to sound poetic.

“It smells like smoke,” she said bluntly.

She wasn’t wrong.

Because my parents smoked, most of our family treasures carried that scent. I didn’t mind. It was a time machine to a different house, a different decade, and people I can only remember.

Memories are good at tricking you.

I promised myself I would clear out the space, an area abandoned with plastic tubs, worn-out boxes, and holiday decorations. The kids had a job too: to clean out their toys. I also promised a garage sale, something I had never done.

I told myself this would be a simple undertaking.

It wasn’t.

Deciding what we didn’t use was easy. The hard part was realizing that once something was let go, the memory attached to it felt like it might go with it.

The first box I opened had my mom’s brass collection. She loved anything brass – candlesticks, picture frames, even ashtrays. I found the brass helicopter she bought me when I was a kid on her only trip to California. She knew I loved the idea of flying, but she was afraid of it. That gift was how we met in the middle.

Another box held my grandad’s law books, yellowed with age and carrying the same faint smell of pipe smoke he carried with him. Even though they were outdated, they looked like the ones I carried in law school. A chapter of life we shared together.

Nearby sat two childhoods side-by-side, my dad’s and mine. His rusty paint can of marbles and my battered box of Star Wars toys. I inherited his memories, and I created my own. Those toys took me back to playing in my room and staging epic battles until forced to dinner.

Every box slowed me down. Not because of the weight of the work, but the weight of what came out of it.

I needed a break. Not physically … mentally.

I went upstairs to see how my kids were doing. I found piles of Paw Patrol, Bluey, and Frozen toys. I asked them a question I had been avoiding myself:

“Are you sure you’re okay parting with these?”

My daughter turned to me and said, “I don’t play with them. Someone else might want them more.”

That statement hit home.

I wasn’t holding onto things because I needed them. I was holding onto them because I was afraid.

That’s the trick with memories. These cherished items make you think that if you hold on to them, you can hold on to the past.

The truth is we all fill our attics, basements, and storage units with things we rarely touch, convincing ourselves we’re preserving something that can’t be stored.

None of what I was trying to hold onto was in the basement.

It lives in me.

So, I know I can, “let it go,” as my daughter might sing.

Then again, no one’s touching my Star Wars box.

I mean, we don’t have to get rid of everything.

Todd Thompson is the Leavenworth County Attorney. Send email to countyattorney@leavenworthcounty.gov.