Another birthday.

A shocking insight.

My siblings and I have become the “older generation.”

In the past, when we found an old photo, we’d go to our elderly parents and they’d clarify who the ancestors were in the photo, and why they left the Old Country and landed in America.

Now our grandparents, aunts, uncles and parents are all deceased. My brothers and I — now the “Keepers of Memories.”

While sorting through boxes of holiday decorations, I unearthed a large wooden trunk with buckled leather straps. Many of my memories survived through the influence of the trunk.

When I was a kid during spring housecleaning time, Mom sorted through the trunk, the contents smelling of mothballs. She draped pieced quilts over the clothesline to air in a spring breeze and then repacked them.

As kids, my siblings and I shuffled through the photos, amused at the strange clothes and robust beards. In time, we’d lose interest and head off to play.

Decades later, I tugged the Memory Trunk into a storage room clearing and opened the lid. A faint whiff of mothballs wafted out. Like an archeological dig, uncovering a layer at a time, I peeled back the contents.

At the top, photos of families at picnics and clustered outside farm homes. Some relatives leaned against car fenders, and others mounted on horses. A few jubilant-looking ancestors dressed in wedding gowns. Other grim-faced families wore faded dresses, plaid shirts, and patched bib overalls.

“Who is this guy?” asked a grandson joining me. He picked up a photo of a soldier looking patriotic and handsome in a military uniform.

“That’s Great-uncle Stanley,” I said. “He’s the one with the long beard who came to Great-aunt Lizzie’s 90th birthday party.”

No wonder the grandson didn’t recognize Stanley, who in the passing decades had turned bald, wrinkled and pudgy.

Along with photos, I discovered letters with stories to tell, newspaper clippings of births, marriages and town happenings — all nestled among school papers.

Next layer — handwork: crocheted doilies, a knit shawl, and pieced quilts sewn from scraps of fabric and colorful as a flower garden.

Another layer. A painful layer filled with sorrows: obituaries, funeral programs, baby toys never used, a deceased youth’s school yearbook.

I unfolded tissue paper and lifted out handcrafted, flannel baby nightgowns. At the neckline, my mother had embroidered delicate pink rosebuds and crocheted lace along the edge — nightgowns never worn for an infant who died during delivery.

And the next layer in the trunk — the gold layer. Literally, some gold coins, a few gold pieces of jewelry. Figuratively, also gold. The important discovery: journals written by my mother — two five-year leather journals covering the 1930s into the 1940s. Mom recorded how she and Dad met in Alaska, fell in love and married.

On Dec. 30, 1941, Mom wrote they were “up early and in total blackout, we went to the airport and flew to Juneau.” The next day they flew out of Juneau and arrived in Seattle to be met by family. There the journals end.

At the bottom of the Memory Trunk, a few newspapers seemed like padding to secure trunk contents and turned out to be recounting bits and pieces of history, both news and advertisements.

An Alaskan airline flying from Fairbanks to Nome advertised as “dependable, efficient, speedy, and cheerful.” The local residents must have appreciated a cheerful pilot, especially while heading to Nome during a winter storm.

While regretting I didn’t pay more attention to elderly relatives sharing family history stories when they were still alive, I discovered interviews of elderly parents I’d typed up that I’ll share with family.