A Suitcase of Memories

As far as I knew, I had moved completely out of my mom's house 14 years ago.  My mom has recently been insistent that I should take some time to clean my stuff out of the closet of my old bedroom.  I was all "what stuff?"

Finally she got me to go up into the closet, on a stepladder, dust cloth in hand.  On the very highest shelves, I did find archaeological evidence of my past life.  

A cassette-tape Sony Walkman.  Contact lens solution that expired in 1993.  The shoes I wore to my high school prom.  A straw hat with a lacy ribbon, very Pretty In Pink.

And then, the box.  Just a plain, cardboard box.  I lifted the lid.  Little did I know it was booby trapped.  A time bomb!  It went off in my face, and just like that I was back in high school.

It was everything my ex-husband had ever given me, from the sweet little cartoons he passed to me in grade nine geography class to portraits of me he'd drawn in his college Illustration course.  Two corsages, almost unrecognizable, crumbled to dust except for the shiny, elastic wristbands.  A candy necklace in an advance state of decay.  

I had also hung on to cards, doodles, and notes from other high school friends.  There were countless sheets of 8.5" x 11" paper covered with caricatures and notations from long-forgotten in-jokes.  There was a greeting card from a classmate called Richard, who invented his own system of spelling somewhat similar to LOLspeak, signed, as was his habit, "Wrych".

In high school I was a high-strung girl: by turns moody, neurotic, ecstatic, flirtatious, terrified, smitten, shy, and hungry for love.  When I was down, the whole world closed in.  When I was up, I flew straight for the sun.  The shoebox was like an urn, containing the ashes of my brightest-burning moments.

I must have kept everything ever signed To Spark, Love [Boyfriend].  It was very odd to find those sentiments, so heartfelt, addressed to me by two men who are both now married to other women.  One of them is a good friend still.  Ken and I visit him, his wife, and their one-year-old son at their home, which they are renovating.  It was so odd to be reminded of our teenage, nuclear-force love.  I was 15.  He was 17.  I thought he was so mature and worldly.  It just goes to show how everything is relative.

I didn't have time to sort through everything in the box.  There was more on the shelf.  More dusty old crap.  Crazy glue that had sat so long it wasn't crazy anymore.  My income tax statements from back in the day when being a summer camp counsellor was my only taxable income.  Reams of complicated sheet music, which I can't believe I ever managed to play on my long-gone violin.

The box is still sitting at my mom's house, waiting for me to sit down with it and go deeper.  I'm looking forward to finding more treasures, but also slightly dreading the emotional roller-coaster that might be triggered, depending on what I find.  We shall see.  In any case, I'm sure glad that I saved my mementos.  My sister might want the never-used neon-pink and neon-green shoelaces.  By next year, I bet they'll be totally back in style.

First one to identify the song that my post title comes from gets a gold star.