Every so often I like to make a trip up to the attic. My attic looks like those you see or can picture with ease. There is a round window inside a dormer. Outside it's just barely grey like the first snow is set in the afternoon sky. The light in the attic is bright enough and the bare incandescent bulb adds some shadows and even seems to make the attic a bit warmer feeling. There are several old chest of drawers filled with yellowing black and white family pictures of my grandad and his peonies. And some of my brother and I all dressed up for easter with our dad. Pics of my mom and dad laughing over barbeques, dinner parties, camping and in front of the old buick are in the lot.
The wood floor creaks with age here and there. Just over there by the window is my old trunk. My high school cap and gown wrapped in plastic sit on top. Leaning against are my framed Bachelors and Masters Diplomas. The treasure inside is what I want to look at though. Inside I find all sorts of memories. Old love letters and cards...funny I haven't picked them up in a long time and yet they still tug at my heart, sadly. There are those old polaroids of our Halloween pumpkin carving (there was such a stupid argument about what to carve) and that chicken pot pie we made...I remember that tiny little apartment off Logan Circle, never enough room for anything - always he asked me to stop bringing home more "stuff". There's the Garden Book - the one with the ideas for how we would plan out the garden, the house... paint samples and pages torn from House and Garden and Metropolitan Home, only then it was Met Apt. - we'll never do that or I can't stand that, he would say! Pictures from that terrible vacation to P-Town on my B-day. Here are scraps...and notes and e-mails. Airline stubs to Savannah, receipts from the Marriott on the River and 7th floor Hilton room with the balcony. Here are some pics from that days in the park in Savannah...climbing trees and basketball....it was fun then...at the beginning before my drugs, before my tequila, before he left to live on the internet to get away from me...
Enough of those pics, those memories...there toward the bottom of the trunk is the little wheel, the treadmill...the one those crazy squirrels run round, trying to get the nuts....
The wood floor creaks with age here and there. Just over there by the window is my old trunk. My high school cap and gown wrapped in plastic sit on top. Leaning against are my framed Bachelors and Masters Diplomas. The treasure inside is what I want to look at though. Inside I find all sorts of memories. Old love letters and cards...funny I haven't picked them up in a long time and yet they still tug at my heart, sadly. There are those old polaroids of our Halloween pumpkin carving (there was such a stupid argument about what to carve) and that chicken pot pie we made...I remember that tiny little apartment off Logan Circle, never enough room for anything - always he asked me to stop bringing home more "stuff". There's the Garden Book - the one with the ideas for how we would plan out the garden, the house... paint samples and pages torn from House and Garden and Metropolitan Home, only then it was Met Apt. - we'll never do that or I can't stand that, he would say! Pictures from that terrible vacation to P-Town on my B-day. Here are scraps...and notes and e-mails. Airline stubs to Savannah, receipts from the Marriott on the River and 7th floor Hilton room with the balcony. Here are some pics from that days in the park in Savannah...climbing trees and basketball....it was fun then...at the beginning before my drugs, before my tequila, before he left to live on the internet to get away from me...
Enough of those pics, those memories...there toward the bottom of the trunk is the little wheel, the treadmill...the one those crazy squirrels run round, trying to get the nuts....
Of course, there is no real attic, or pics of my family in the chest of drawers. There is no window in the dormer or old trunk. There is just my ego playing a game of tug of war with me, stirring up old memories that start in that warm familiar way...the trouble is, it ends in a sad, cold sort of tragic way. My ego isn't always about making me feel superior...a lot of times, more often then I prefer, it tries to makes me feel alone. See, it wants me to get all wrapped up so that it might be able to convice me that I might feel better if I use. Use something, anything, to make the discomforts of life, the realities of everyday experiences, go away. Fortunately, it loses today, like it did yesterday too. I win, and my ego hates to lose. It will try again tomorrow.
