Heather Marie Wells

  Well, I’m still looking for the interview tapes of my grandfather and my mother-in-law. In this round I’ve learned not to trust labels. I found a commercial tape in a “homemade” cassette holder. That prompted me to go back through all my commercial tapes and look in the cases. I found some home tapes in them and got all my commercial tapes back in their cases. I found a tape that was labeled with my husband’s name, but I listened to it anyway. It was an accompaniment tape from my voice lessons. I updated the label. I found another tape that was labeled Heather’s Birthday Present. I listened to it. Turns out it was my birthday present TO my husband. I updated the label to be more precise.  So what did I uncover in this round of listening? Lip Sync contest tape from Elementary School. I still can’t believe we didn’t win with Ghostbusters. But also on that tape was my sister singing, and the B side was some square dance calling. I’m going to have to ask my parents if they recog...

If there is one thing I could tell my younger self, it would be to label things. Sometimes not having a label is a blessing and sometimes it's a curse.  There have been mementos from my childhood that I kept for some reason and rediscovered them 20 years later. I look at them and I think, “What is this? Why did I keep this? What did it mean to me?” There’s no label and if I can’t remember what it was I usually get rid of it. These things are usually some kind of ephemeral thing that is easy to let go of. In these cases, not having a label can sometimes make it easier to let them go. And just as often, I also find labeled things of this nature and decide it’s time to let go of them since they don’t hold as much meaning to me as they once did. However, the vast majority of time I regret that I didn’t label something. There are things I find that I end up racking my brain trying to remember what they are and why I kept them; I agonize over it for days, sometimes weeks. Even worse thou...