1) Not really a great day. At least . . . not a day that went according to plan. I didn’t get anything written, and I certainly didn’t clean anything (except myself). I didn’t go outside until it was time to go to yoga, missing what I gather was a wonderful warm day.
2) instead, I harnessed some energy to start organizing the chaos of the dining room, going through mail and old papers to toss, adding things to the pile for the (eventual) yard sale. I’m tired of eating at a table stacked so high with papers!
2a) The dining room is now very full of my gramma’s dining room furniture, which we’ve learned is from a popular mid-century outfit known as Cushman Colonial: table with two leaves, six chairs, sideboard, china cabinet, footstool (Gramma was very short) . . . and a desk. Gramma always kept in her dining room; Mother kept it with the table and chairs in the her kitchen. I’ve always loved the entire suite, as I’ve always loved everything chosen by Gramma.
2b) I thought the desk had been shipped up empty . . . and I was wrong. One drawer is filled up with old letters, and I might have been responsible for that; I honestly don’t remember. There is another drawer filled with stationery that Mother hadn’t yet used (including half a box of notecards from the Met, which had become a tradition for me to give her). Yet another had a bit more stationery, some correspondence from 2001-2005, and a wooden napkin holder carved as a flower Mother bought in Hawaii in 1977. One drawer contained high school yearbooks for Mother, Daddy, and Uncle Bill.
2c) But the last drawer, to my horror, contains most of my elementary school pictures, as well as (without any horror at all) a bag of 60th wedding anniversary greetings, another bag of Christmas and other greetings, and a box of old letters from when Mother was in college. I was not expecting any of these things!
3) Among those photos was a standup frame of clear plastic with the photo of me at the airport before flying away to freshman year of college. Behind that photo was a photo of me that I do not remember at all - but clearly from 1991, because I remember getting that sweater at ye Yddye Bywyre before the painful phone conversation with my dad about me being gay. I post it here just to prove that, then as now, my hair is really all I have to offer.
3a) “Where were we going that night, Lloyd and I?" The things you remember . . . and the things you don’t.”