Best of Beth Ashley: We all have our own lives to ponder

Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2015.

Lately I’ve been going through boxes of old papers, trying to simplify my life.

The idea is to get rid of all the things I no longer need so my kids won’t have to toss things when I am gone.

Need is a relative word, of course.

Do I really have to hold onto long-ago notes from Herb Caen, George Lucas, Dianne Feinstein and others whose autographs might someday be precious?

What a pack rat I was. I had saved every report card from high school and college, and programs from every event where I was a speaker or marginal honoree. I saved pictures of the long-ago evening where I was among those honored by the Marin Cultural Association. All I remember is that my friend Ursula McCarthy had hired the Stanford Band for the party, and there I am in pictures, with my jaw dropping, my kids laughing and the Stanford Dollies prancing behind my chair.

Geeze.

But I finally threw those mementos away. Why — 35 years later — would anyone care?

Now and then I came across old articles I had written — an interview with Julia Child, for instance, or one with Walter Cronkite, my all-time journalistic idol. I had saved a couple of columns I had treasured at the time. The one about my son Guy’s final day at Redwood and making the last of thousands of school lunches brought me to the edge of tears. The column, called “When we are alone, we dance,” was reprinted in the Reader’s Digest.

I threw away a whole notebook I had saved from an interview with Wu’er Kaixi, the Chinese student who had confronted Chinese Premier Li Peng during the revolt in Tiananmen Square. Kaixi had come to Dominican for a spell, thanks to Marin sinologist Orville Schell, and I had been able to tap into that incredible moment in Chinese history. But my notes made no sense anymore, so out went that notebook, too.

At the same time, I couldn’t bear to throw out copies of a small magazine that reprinted a story I had written about the workday I spent with my son Jeff, who was a truck driver. It was precious for two reasons. One, Jeff has since died, and two, with that magazine, I achieved a lifelong ambition: a photo of Jeff and me and his huge eight-wheeler ran on the magazine cover. I was a cover girl at last — thanks to Trucker’s Digest.

As I sorted through pile after pile of old papers, I couldn’t help marveling at how long my life had been, how many wondrous things had happened. I found copies of articles I had written for Die Neue Zeitung when I worked for the U.S. State Department in Germany, and front pages of China Daily, when I had worked as an English language editor in Beijing. The only souvenirs I had from my days as an exchange editor in Moscow were reprints of the columns I had written from there.

But memories flooded back: to file the columns, I had to walk up eight flights of stairs to the Associated Press office, where I could send my writings to the IJ via London. I don’t remember whether I walked up because there was no elevator, or whether I just didn’t trust the elevator in those days of rickety Russian technology.

I came across dozens of souvenirs of my days at the IJ and the friends I made there, many of whom are now long gone. I found a picture of one of our Saturday night parties, back when Bryce Anderson was city editor and Don Davis ran the editorial page and Bill Earle was a fledgling IJ reporter, before he moved to the San Francisco Examiner. We all have highball glasses in our hands. What fun we had together. Where are you now, dear old friends?

Not the least of the treasures I uncovered were pictures of my family. Pete in his fencing garb, posing for an article in the Sunday Chron. Guy on his graduation day at UC Santa Cruz. Gil and me in Beijing, when he took me along on a business trip. One of my favorite photos — a real keeper — is me with my five handsome sons. At 5-foot-8, I am a real shrimp beside my tall boys.

There were photos of the day I married my first husband, Peter’s father, which, of course, I gave to Peter, and others of the day I married Ross, a marriage that ended when he died 12 years later. I also kept pictures of the other big man in my life, nephew Bruce, who lived with me for 17 wonderful years.

Throwing out the evidence was painful, of course, but I really needed only a photo here and there, a clipping, a letter or two as testimony to a life I have treasured.

As the song goes, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” I’m still not sure, and leaving a ton of paper won’t help anyone else figure it out either.

Besides, my kids have their own lives to ponder.