Things We Put Away

I started this entry at the beginning of the summer.  For what it's worth, here it is...

So, once again, I was sent into my mother's basement to check the state of old books I have in large plastic bins.  Did I want anything, or could we give them a toss.  Sorry, folks, but I cannot toss a book.  Out of curiosity, though, I wanted to see what was down there.  The first bin had some basic stuff: A D.H. Lawrence, some Freud, a volume of poetry I think I read during my undergraduate studies.  A hodgepodge of books from an earlier time, nothing that caught my interest.  The second bin I opened had more pads of my drawing and painting.  Memories flooding back again, and sheer shock that I still had these things.  I must have recovered them after leaving my ex-husband, but did not remember, and have not opened these boxes since.  Strange.  The things we put away mentally and physically.

And what of the people we put away?
Along with those books, I can associate people who were in my life at the time.  People I confided in, loved, yearned for and considered part of my daily life.  There were professors like A.L., teaching the course The Philosophy of Seduction who was possibly the ugliest man alive physically, but when he spoke a light from within illuminated him and he became the focus of my young co-ed daydreams.  I am sure he had no idea the effect he had on me, as all my sexual urges were restrained to the space between my ears, but I would leave his class in a state.  There was my good friend and writing partner, whose name I can't even remember (Rachel? Rebecca?) who would sit with me between classes to discuss poetry and write.  She was younger than me by about 3 or 4 years, which then seemed like much more.  I was so close to her, we shared countless hours writing together, and discussing what we had written and why.   She was a great writer, and I was awed by how someone "so young" could write with such depth of emotion.  She was very important to me, and I thought we would be friends for a very long time.  Instead I can't remember much more about her than she wrote with me for a few months.  There is a friend who I feel like I just spoke to last week, but who I now realize I have not spoken to in about 12 years.  We were also extremely close, right down to our families knowing each other intimately.  We use to go for long drives and talk about getting married to perfect men, living in the same town and raising our babies together.  Shortly after she married and started her family, we drifted apart and mine fell apart.  I am thankful for not having children during that marriage, but sorry that my friend and I faded apart as so many important people in my life faded away.  There were lovers, friends and colleagues who were so very important to me, so much a part of my life.  It's strange to me how those personalities could just evaporate with time.

Now where are they?
Some of them do remain, but most are ghosts, shadows, memories.  I remember thinking at one time my heart would break if I lost a certain friendships.  Maybe it did a little, but upon remembrance of things past, there are only one-dimensional.  What remains are events, maybe the time.  Often, memories are peppered with embellishments; additions to enhance a story, or deletions to remember more sweetly, less sourly.  Perhaps this is necessary to retain a sense of personal history.

And back to books.
The night I left my husband, barefoot and leaving all my possessions behind, I could almost hear the cries of the books I left behind in the white armoir I bought to house them all.  I could hear Constance Chatterly, Romeo and Juliet, Hume, Kant,  Elliot, Anais and Vita calling out for me to return for them.  I did, but could only take what could fit in my car, and no more.  I am sure those books that meant so much to me - the characters that entered my life and have stayed there since -  must be lying at the bottom of the Long Island Sound, phantom passengers on the 1962 Chris Craft that went missing along with my marriage.

O.K., so some things, some people you just don't miss.
Huh.