My name is Emily Cushing. I am 17 years old now. I went to Grays Harbor Adventist Christian School from my fifth grade year through eighth grade.
In February of 2013, my sister Allison and my friends Cami and Syrene initiated making a time capsule. We used an empty chocolate sampler tin to put the things in. We let all 18 kids at our school put something in the time capsule if they wanted to. It was sort of a last-minute, impulsive, exciting thing.
Kids put in random things they had on hand: a fuzzy pencil, a couple markers, a few erasers, a rubber toy, a beaded trinket, a penny, some liquid glue, colored pencils, a Bible lessons notebook, a KidsView magazine, a picture of Jesus, a plastic toy, a ribbon. My friends and I did write some notes to put in it. Once all the things were put in the tin, we sealed it with duct tape that we prayed would hold. Finally, we buried it outside.
Our original plan to uncover our time capsule after five years was discarded partly because my sister and I are moving this year and partly because we were all, frankly, impatient. So three years after it was buried, Allison, Cami, Syrene and I decided on a day and time for us all to go back to Grays Harbor Adventist Christian School and find our time capsule.
That day was May 19, 2016. We were given shovels and the help of two younger boys. Cami remembered that we buried it by a V-shaped tree. We found the tree and started to dig. At first we couldn’t find it, but then one of the boys with us dug closer to the tree and found it, so we brought it inside.
We got it open and surveyed the contents. The papers we had put in the tin were waterlogged because we hadn’t had the foresight to Ziploc anything. We did our best to decipher what we had written on the papers. After we had taken sufficient pictures, we threw away the gross things. All the other kids got to look at the contents of the time capsule.
In the end, it wasn’t so much the things in the time capsule that made the whole event worth it, but the cherished memories sparked by being in our old school and uncovering the time capsule.
Emily Cushing, 17, who attended Grays Harbor Adventist Christian School for fifth through eighth grades
Grays Harbor alumni (from left) Allison Cushing, Syrene Stopsen, Cami Clevenger and Emily Cushing return to dig up a time capsule they buried as elementary students.
Digging up the time capsule provides a special moment of interaction between Grays Harbor alumni and current students.
Grays Harbor alumni and students look through the contents of the time capsule.
