Paper Trail

After many months of digging slowly and carefully through the accumulated debris of years, I finally came to a place of beginning and ending. There are only two short years in what some might call senior high and others might call junior college; for many of us, it's a period in which the child bows out to the uncertainty of adulthood.

I found the little archive in which I'd packed the notes and letters of old friends from that time. They are pre-adult, adolescent, post-childhood things. Having kept them over the years as mementos of my youth has ensured that I retain perspective. I've never laughed mockingly at teenage crushes and the other minor affairs of the heart that my students experience; I've been to that kind of place in life before.

I remember it all, and when I forget, I remember again, looking at the green ink one person used, the paper, the cards, the decorated envelopes and the innocent photographs. Which ones loved, and were loved? Which ones loved, and went away? The emotions are long buried, but like a summer in the south of France, can be evoked, ghostly, in the dim light or the deep red wine.

It's only paper. It ought to be discarded. But it is still there, and every time I return, I know what I have lost, and what I have gained.