We’re clearing out my grandfather’s house this month. That means I’m packing up things I’ve seen my entire life but never once looked at: ornately decorated plates, strangely shaped pots, glasses for every imaginable cocktail.

Among these are this funky-colored glass with intricate patterns that shimmer in different colors depending on the light. Some are Triaminic-orange that glint yellow and blue. Two are the color of gasoline in a puddle. Some are Army green that glimmers pink.

To the Goodwill box, I thought at first. But then I saw that psychedelic pink, and I said: “What are these, exactly?”

“Those were everywhere in the seventies,” said my mom.

“They’re carnival glass,” said an aunt. She began Googling it.

“‘It reached the height of its popularity in the 1920s,’” she read. “‘The name Carnival glass was adopted by collectors in the 1950s as the items were sometimes given as prizes at carnivals and fairgrounds. It’s moulded with an applied iridescent surface shimmer applied while the glass is still hot.’”

Calliope music waltzed through my head. Images of the World Fair and 1920s carnivals.

“Huh,” I said, putting the orange ones back in the hutch. “Maybe we’ll keep these.”

✨

When you know the story behind something, you see it differently.

This is true for objects, and it’s true about ourselves.

And it’s often an unexpected byproduct of writing your memoir.

In that way, writing memoir can be an act of self-love.

Writing your own story, when you do it from a place of curiosity and grace, often results in something only understandable to people who have done it: a new perspective on who you are and where you came from.

Acceptance, gratitude. Self-forgiveness.

Parts of your story — and of yourself — that only glimmer when you look from a different angle..