Can you tell what they are? Or what they were before the rain blew under the garage door and dampened the box that they were still stored in because I hadn't gotten to opening and sorting through that box, yet?
They were mortarboard tassles, graduation tassles. Let's see if I can provide a picture of them from happier days.
I have moved ten times so far in my life. Eleven if you count going away to school for a couple of semesters.
My Grandparents, on the other hand, never moved in my lifetime. Two of the three* went to nursing homes near the end, but their stuff was never removed from the house they had lived in, while they lived. They also didn't redecorate much.
Scratch that. They didn't ever redecorate, but sometimes things around the house would change, on a piece by piece basis. A newfangled 'portable' TV on top of the wooden cabinetted TV, because the big TV stopped working. A new painting over the TVs, because they had won it in a raffle at the church. Newer TV trays, because they had more grandkids to accommodate.
They had arranged things the way they wanted them some time ago. That included the high school graduation portraits on Grandma and Grandpa's wall. They were there through my entire childhood, with the tassles hanging from the left corner.
You did that to commemorate that kind of success, that kind of milestone. Grandchildren would occassionally climb up on the back of an overstuffed chair (in the oldest memories there were doilies on the back and arms) to snake a finger through the silkiness of one of them, or to pet them with two or three fingers.
They would be careful, though because those were obviously prescious things. Over the years, those grandchildren gave Grandma and Grandpa their own graduation pictures and tassels. I was the oldest, so mine went up first.
In that sodden pile, up above, are the tassels from my uncles, aunt, mother, self (high school and college), and my own kids. Sigh. I have no idea what I would have done with them, but I feel guilty that they got damaged rather than decided on properly.
The only tassel unscathed was my ex-husband's. I'd forgotten I had that. It got tossed along with the rest. Less guilt there. If he'd been interested in it at all, he'd have asked for it.
For the rest of them, it's a pity. But if anyone is interested, we still have pictures. From before and after the soaking.
* No incest involved. One had died before I was born and therefore does not figure in my childhood memories, except in bitter stories that my father would tell.
