Why do I keep a plastic trophy for a single game bowling score sitting on a shelf with other "favorite" things.

It's plastic. It was awarded in 1954! I haven't bowled much since then. What is its importance in my life?

Next to it, why do I try to keep a sprig of philodendron alive in an ugly and disintegrating clay pot when I should toss it and buy a healthy plant? It's not pretty.

And then I lug four mildewed scrapbooks from my attic to the living room. These books are almost as old as I am.

My fingertips are dirty from ink as I finger the many, many newsprint clippings announcing marriages, tragic accidents and deaths, births and play reviews.

There's even a yellowed article from a 1951 Post-Gazette edition when I was a senior at Westminster College, honored to be selected the new May Queen.

"The crowning this year was forced inside due to rain. Could it be because the queen's last name is Cloud?"

Obviously, a slow news day. But of course I saved the clipping. Who knew if I would ever see my name in print again in my lifetime?

I can't count the number of matchbooks I have collected through the years, and taped to the scrapbook pages -- restaurants in New York City: Post & Coach Inn, Prexy's, The Maisonette, Chateau Madrid, The Brass Rail, Toffenetti's and Chung King on Lexington with Lunch 40 cents, Dinner 55 cents.

How about those sugar cubes? There were no sweetener packets 50 years ago, just cubes from McGinnis Seafood and Zoe Chase, Schrafft's and Longchamp's.

There are so many wedding invitations and baby shower invitations and birth announcements. Dozens of them.

Why do I save such things?

The first newspaper column which carried my name, dated Sept. 3, 1952, is yellow with age. So are newspaper clips from the college Holcad, reviewing plays in which I appeared, reminding me how much I loved acting and the people with whom I shared the experience.

There's my first pay envelope in New York -- $48 before taxes.

One tissue-wrapped corsage with two dried pink camellias and silver ribbon has made one scrapbook bulge a bit.

I guess there is no real mystery to our saving bits from the past. Virtually everything I looked at has a memory.

Here's the dilemma. When do you pitch all of this stuff which smells of aging construction paper, old newsprint and faded flowers?

When is it time to let it all go?

It has meaning only for me because we save only what matters to us.

We learn a little more about ourselves as we settle in and review the past. It makes us wonder and smile and shake our head. Surely it makes us think about where we have been.

When I moved, they moved with me.

But I just can't quite bring myself to haul them to the curb as garbage. In that case, I should sit with them and be hauled off as well.

I guess you know -- they're back in the attic, awaiting another soul-searching day.