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For instance, diplomas. Mary has one from the Washington University School of Dental Medicine. It represents an unlikely dream that she willed into reality.

She started college at the University of Arizona where her dad was a physics professor. She did not take college seriously, and her old-school father believed that if you did not take college seriously, you shouldn’t be there. So he took it upon himself to enroll her in a dental hygiene program in Phoenix.

She thought, why not? She graduated from dental hygiene school and moved into the apartment next to mine.

I was sitting outside my apartment, probably stoned, when she and her father walked past. He gave me a wary look.

Mary enjoyed being a dental hygienist but soon decided she was smarter than the dentist. She enrolled in some science classes at Arizona State to meet the prerequisites for dental school.

Her plans seemed unrealistic. I remember people saying, “You can’t get accepted into dental school without a degree.”

Complicating matters, there was no dental school in Arizona.

She did very well on the national pre-dental school tests, and she applied at three schools — Georgetown, WashU and the University of Washington in Seattle. We were living together by then, but those were casual, hippie times, and I don’t think I had ever seen her dressed up. She bought a skirt and jacket to wear to her interviews. She looked fantastic. Off she went.

She was accepted at Georgetown and WashU and was put on a wait list in Seattle with the guarantee that if she didn’t get in that year, she’d get in the following year. She was not in the mood to wait.

“Georgetown or Washington University. What do you think?” she asked me.

By then, I was a reporter. I told her I wouldn’t even get an interview in Washington, but maybe I could get on with one of the two dailies in St. Louis.

So she came to St. Louis and I followed a year and a half later. Her diploma hung in her office until she retired, and then it went into the basement storage room.

Just around the corner from the storage room is my study. Somewhere in the mess is my diploma. I have a master’s in business administration from the John Cook School of Business at St. Louis University.

Of course, I did not earn it.

A little more than 20 years ago, St. Louis University invited the head of American Airlines to deliver a commencement speech. But he got caught up in some difficulties and practically at the last moment, he backed out. I made light of the situation in a column, and Father Lawrence Biondi, president of the university, called me. “As long as you know so much, why don’t you give the commencement address?” he asked.

I said I would fill in if he agreed to give me an honorary bachelor degree. He said they didn’t give honorary bachelor degrees. I’ll give you an MBA, he said.

I also have a Marine Corps uniform that does not belong to me. I have a summer khaki shirt, a pair of pants and a couple of caps — covers, we called them — and my name is stamped on all of them. But my winter green jacket belongs to Paul Levering. I cannot explain that.

Oddly enough, the jacket is the only thing from those days that comes close to fitting. Paul was bigger than I was. I’ve grown into his jacket.

He wanted to be a merchant marine and work on the Great Lakes. I hope that worked out for him.

I have dozens of other things that will mean nothing to anybody, but are somehow important to me. I am reminded of a friend who was downsizing and was forced to throw away most of his stuff.

“I have been able to emotionally detach myself from my possessions,” he wrote, “and I feel like a historian combing through the clutter of an unexceptional man. What kind of person could have thought any of this was worth saving?”

We are all like that, I suspect.

I have a small box in which I keep family heirlooms, including a dollar bill issued when Henry Morgenthau Jr. was secretary of the Treasury. He served during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. What is the significance of that particular dollar bill? My parents did not approve of Roosevelt, and yet that dollar bill is in the same special box that includes a locket with my father’s photo that my mother must have worn during the war. Also, a Union Scotch Picnic medallion from 1917.

That medallion belonged to my grandmother. So strong was her Protestant fervor that she went to the Scotch-Union picnic during the Spanish flu.

In that spirit, I have added to the heirlooms box my COVID-19 vaccination record cards. Will a grandchild or great grandchild, see the connection?

I also have a heavy cardboard box that came with a bottle of wine. Also, a Cuban cigar box. I am not suggesting either of them is valuable, but you just don’t throw stuff like that away.

I also have a stone axe-head. Maybe it’s old. Plus several bits of pottery I got in Mexico. I imagine members of some long-lost tribe using these things before Europeans came to the New World. It’s more likely that somebody made them in 1970 to sell to gullible tourists.

I have dresser drawers full of photos, the oldest of which are of people I don’t recognize. Is there an obligation to hand these down to future generations?

That’s the problem with spring cleaning as you get older. Too many heavy questions.