With all the moving around college students do, the sorted masses of “stuff” accumulated each year are usually donated to a dumpster at the end of the school year. But the good things — the tickets stubs of a great concert, a beer can left over from a party — they go into a memory box.

Des Moines author, Mary Kaye Shanley, has captured the poignancy of tucking away those special keepsakes and then revisiting a moment in the past when they are discovered.

The Memory Box relates that universal experience of pulling up roots and moving while still holding on to cherished memories. In this story, as the grandmother moves from the family home into a city apartment, with her hat box full of keepsakes, it is her daughter who expresses the loss of her own foundations.

“I wrote about me, I wrote about you, everybody really,” Shanley said. “It’s an experience that’s very common.”

In the story, the hat box treasures provide the perfect opportunity for the grandmother to share stories about “the good old days” with her granddaughter, but her daughter fears that by joining in with her remembrances, leaving the place she knew as “home” will be even more painful.

Shanley said it can be just as painful for the grown children to relinquish their childhood home. “Sometimes I think, ‘Wow, they’d kill me if we moved,'” Shanley said of the response she’d get if she were to sell the home she raised her family in.

Shanley’s wise and insightful narration is complemented with rich illustrations by award-winning artist, Paul Micich. This follows the success of their first collaborative effort, She Taught Me to Eat Artichokes, which Shanley was asked to write.

“It was a book about friendship, a friend that had cancer,” she explained. “I was asked to write it and Paul did the illustrations, but we never met, not until this book.”

The Memory Box and She Taught Me to Eat Artichokes spawned the idea for the next book the Shanley would write, When I Think About My Father. “I realized all the major characters in my first two books were females,” Shanley explained. “But males are an important part of my life, too.

Shanley said she wanted to do a book for men. Her conception was a collection of essays that celebrate fatherhood. Some of the fathers and writers in When I Think About My Father are familiar — Walt Disney, Gerald Ford, Billy Graham, Larry King, Bob Knight. Just as many never expected to see their names in print.

“You’re just three phone calls away from anyone in the world,” Shanley said of how she got such people to share memories of their fathers. “Those people are very easy to find, if you know where to start.”

Shanley said the essays in the book were chosen because “each says something valuable about fatherhood. … We have a whole generation who doesn’t know the value of fatherhood,” she said. “But we have a desire to love our fathers no matter what.”

The 48 essays share very personal glimpses of life with their fathers: the tales include fly fishing, parental wisdom in handling a young man’s first smoking experience and another young man’s idea for saving money.

A native of Webster City, Shanley earned a journalism degree at Creighton University in Omaha and has taught journalism here at Iowa State. She and her husband live in West Des Moines.

Shanley will be the keynote speaker for the Young Writer’s Conference sponsored by the ISU College of Education. The conference will be from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Scheman Center. Signed copies of her books are available at the University Book Store.