On New Year’s Day, mostly to amuse some restless grandchildren, I carried a drawer from the filing cabinet in the basement up the steps and into the kitchen. The three younger kids and I gathered around the table and pulled some treasures from the drawer: the little bonnet their toddler great-great-great grandfather had worn on the ship from Ireland to America well over a century ago, the coins collected as a child by my deceased wife, including several silver dollars from the 1920s, and a few other odds and ends. The kids delighted particularly in the coins, but I—I was stunned by the letters, birthday and Christmas cards, and notes I’d saved for over 60 years. Here were several hundred documents from my past: letters my mom had sent me when I was away at school in the early 1960s, more letters from family and friends in my college days, …