Could it be that it was all so simple then?

Trips down memory lane are not always smoothly paved; more often than not, they are awfully bumpy & full of pot holes.

So today started excruciatingly early (i.e. 5 a.m.) as I had to take Anne Marie, Charlie & Olivia to the airport for their flight to Hawaii for their tenth wedding anniversary. Which means, among other things, that I have their wheels for a week, which translates to I can do things one can't do in a Miata; in this case, bringing back things from the storage units, a few boxes at a time, to be gone through & decide what needs to be kept, what needs to be pitched, & what might make a dime in a garage sale.

A little back story here: When Michael & I moved into this house in 1996, Michael's brother came up from Arizona to help us. I love David dearly, but sometimes he gets ideas into his head that cannot be changed. This was one of those times. I picked him up at the airport, & brought him back to the old house, all the way harping about the fact that NOT EVERYTHING WOULD BE MOVING WITH US! Specifically, we had a ton of books, with a substantial number of duplicates (I had inherited my brother's library when he died in 1994, which included a lot of titles that we already had, with the exception that a lot of his books were first editions, signed, sometimes personally, of some of the early, great, groundbreaking works of Gay Literature. Who wanted paperback copies of "Dancer from the Dance" and "A Boy's Own Story" when I had hardbound first editions signed by Andrew Holleran & Edmund White, with the dust jackets intact? Or for that matter, what did I need three copies of Randy Shilts' "Conduct Unbecoming" for? Keith had bought copies for himself, me, & our father, & of course I wound up with all of them). So, I told David "not to pack anything without asking first." Like 18 times.

So we went & picked up the U-Haul truck, David followed me back to the house, & I went to get lunch at KFC for the three of us. And in the 45 minutes (TOPS) that I was gone, David broke down the entire guest room, which of course included the bed that he was going to be sleeping in, as well as pulling ALL of the books out of the bookcases & packing them up in boxes. Without taping them properly. I came home to this &, of course, blew my stack! What about "Don't pack anything without asking, David?" He just shrugged & continued packing. And, of course, whenever one of the boxes of books was picked up, the bottoms fell out, & books went flying.

Well, as a result, a whole butt-load of stuff came with us that wasn't supposed to, & wound up staying in boxes for the next 13 years, until we had to clear out the house to be shown for selling. I promised myself that I would , when the time came, open each box, & figure out what should have been disposed of. Well, now that I am not relocating (yet), I have started bringing boxes home, five of them today, in fact, and started sorting through them. Needless to say, it has turned into something of a shock to the system, in more ways than one.

To begin with, one of the boxes contains nothing but carefully wrapped barware that, of course, belonged to Kent. Like I need extra-large martini glasses! Those things were supposed to go to Goodwill or Out of the Closet. But I guess that my blog a few days ago about Kent has gotten a lot of unresolved grief out of my system, so it wasn't that bad. It just means unpacking all of that stuff, & then repacking what I don't want, need, or have any desire to have taking up space in the house again.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come, & I am still unsure as to how to deal with it. In an "Office Depot" bag, I have unearthed stuff from my past from the 1970's! There are letters from my mom, my sisters, & various assorted friends & other family members dating back to 1975! There are a host of birthday cards from my paternal grandmother, all of which were late,with notes apologizing time & again for forgetting my "special day. " Letters from old girlfriends, addressed to me at Harvard. And most shocking of all, my bound diary from that era of my life, when I almost died from a then as yet-undiagnosed illness (later identified as TMJ syndrome) which put me in the hospital for about a week & a half, as I was dying of starvation as a result of being unable to open my mouth to eat.

Now, you must understand that this was a really emotionally traumatic time for me. Shortly before the onset of this strange illness, my parents separated (briefly), so there was obviously a strong psychosomatic component there. But also, that was my eight grade school year, when I was dealing with a true bitch-on-wheels, a nun by the name of Sister Kathleen Rose. I found out many years later that the monthly faculty meetings regularly degenerated into conversations about what to do to "prevent" me from "corrupting" the other boys at my Catholic Elementary School with my "homosexual tendencies," always initiated by her. Mind you, I was all of 12 at the time. Never mind the fact that I had virtually no friends at all, so who was I going to corrupt, let alone how? It was during that school year that I took my first drink. And I personally hold her responsible for all three of my half-assed suicide attempts.

So anyway, finding these things has brought up an awful lot of stuff, which I am still trying to process.

I'll keep you posted as to the outcome of this!