Life on a Post-it

by Tracey Flower


There’s an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie gets broken up with on a Post-it.

“I’m sorry, I can’t, don’t hate me,” wrote Jack Berger on that infamous square sticky note.

Poor Carrie. As she points out to one of Berger’s friends later in the Post-it episode, “there is a good way to break up with someone and it does not involve a Post-it.”

I can’t say that’s happened to me but after recently watching a re-run of that episode I got to thinking about the significance Post-its have played in my life.

There’s a small drawer at one end of the kitchen table in my parent’s house. It is full of used Post-its. The notes scrawled on them recall the when's and where's of the Flower family past: “gone to the store,” “walking the dog,” or “running far.” The handwriting dictates message ownership rather than a signature. The messages are short, to the point, and not totally significant in retrospect; the sort of messages Post-its were created for. Yet at some point some family member (Mom?) started saving them and the rest of the family followed suit. I’ve even seen them reused from time to time when a note from the past applies to a current situation or destination.

It seems silly, I suppose, to save Post-its, or even to note in a blog post that they’ve been saved. But if you sit down and open that drawer and start reading, you sort of end up getting a snapshot of the Flower family over the years, of a life lived, and remembered, on Post-its; of where we were and where we went, of what was important to us at that moment.

The notes in that drawer are only a small fraction of the many Post-its that have been shared between Flower family members over the years; reminders, questions, labels, and more have been documented on those convenient little pieces of paper. The habit has stuck with me over the years and I often leave myself, and occasionally my roommate, reminders on Post-its. And, in a 2011-take on my Post-it habit, my MacBook's desktop is wallpapered with Stickies.

My favorite Post-its to receive growing up were the birthday notes from my dad. He was always gone to work by the time I woke up on my birthday. And there was always a Post-it on my placemat (yep, my placemat, we had assigned seats) with a birthday message from Dad. So simple. So meaningful. And you know what? I’m pretty sure I have a good handful of them saved in a box somewhere in my parent’s basement.

This is my 50th post here on Flower Blog. If I could have I would have written it on a Post-it.