Oct 06, 2011
My middle child came running into my office yesterday–dirty, sweaty, out of breath, and talking a mile a minute. The house had been awfully quiet and I figured my husband and the boys were up to something outside, but I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. Then I went out and saw they were digging in a little space in our front yard. Instantly, I realized exactly what they had found.
10 years go, my husband and I buried a time capsule for our future children. We’d been married just a year and hadn’t even started to think about having kiddos at that point, but we had this crazy idea to make a time capsule and decided to go for it. I specifically remember we wrote letters to our future children (we thought we were only going to have two and we already had their names picked out…Tristan and Amerlyn. Thank goodness she came along to fulfill our prophecy). Over the years, I’ve thought about when we might dig up the time capsule with the kids. To be honest, I couldn’t really remember what else we had put in there, but I was *really* excited to read what we had written to our future kids.
When they first started digging, the boys had no idea that *we* were to ones who buried it. They were so wrapped up in the excitement of finding treasure…they were convinced it was at least 100 years old, LOL. I was crushed, however, when I saw that the bag protecting it had fallen apart and the tin was severely corroded. Everything that was paper inside the tin (including several photos, my copy of this book–which was a HUGE part of my life–newspapers, magazines, and oh no!!! THOSE LETTERS!!!!) was ruined. I may or may not have cried a little bit over that.
However, some things did survive…
That’s a Polaroid of my hubby and I when I was in college and there’s my genie watch (I was obsessed w/ all things Disney growing up) and somehow, a little miniature plastic Hungry Hippos game survived, too. There was a bunch of old jewelry (almost all of it was corroded beyond recognition), but the greatest find was our high school class rings!! I totally forgot that we had put them in there and I have spent countless hours searching the house for them over the years, LOL. That almost makes up for the lost letters ;-). They say diamonds are forever, but now I’m thinking it’s plastic, Polaroids, and gold.
The boys enjoyed the time capsule much more than we ever would have imagined. We’ve decided to make another one for our family to dig up in another 10 years. I’m excited to see what they choose to put in there and I *hope* we can come up with a water-tight container that won’t fall apart on us–any suggestions…something besides gold?
Have you ever created or recovered a time capsule? I would LOVE to hear your stories and share them w/ our kiddos (talk to me on Facebook).
