memories
One day I came home from school in the mid 90's, sweaty and dirty from a fantastic day on my skate board. I was in the eighth grade and had finally found my nitch. For years my sister and I were tormented by the little gangster wannabes in our neighborhood in South San Francisco, the Industrial City (so said the huge concrete sign on the side of our hill). Lucky for me, although I avoided confrontations like the plague, I was fairly scrappy and had no problem in defending myself...and defending myself well. I developed quite the love affair with my skate board in 6th grade, and by the end of 7th grade bands like Nirvana became so popular I went from being the dirty, strange white kid to a girl people respected, or in the very least, a girl people realized who wasn't afraid to use her skateboard in a fight and who was rumored to have smashed Danielle M's face into a wooden desk about fifteen times after Danielle M decided to get punchy (which was true, but it was certainly self defense).
So, this autumn day I came home to our crazy two story, seventy year old, gray wooden farm house to find my parents very agitated...and quite giddy. They were running around, sorting through household items, calling people, organizing the sale of...everything we owned. Then they drop it on me...Stephanie, we are moving to New York in three weeks and then moving to Prague. We are leaving in three weeks. You may have a suitcase and two boxes, you had better choose what you are keeping wisely.
If you were a thirteen year old, punky little girl, what would you pack? The very first thing I packed, into my suitcase so it wouldn't leave my sight at any moment, was the skateboard Melina gave me. It gets rather hazy from there...once I realized my parents were so busy getting our house packed up, organizing this big, crazy move, I took advantage as much as I could. I stopped going to my classes and hung out with the crazy stoner high-schoolers and middle-schoolers. I took advantage of the ridiculous amount of alcohol that my parents kept in the liquor cabinet, that wasn't coming with us on our journey. I spent a great many sunrises on the side of the hill, staring at clouds, listening to the buzz of the power plant whirring behind me and wishing I could sit on that hill forever.
The boxes were shipped to New York and put in storage, while we traveled for four days across country on a train (my parents felt the blow would be easier if they moved us on to a new life in an interesting way). In the winter my father went ahead of us to Prague to find an apartment. My sister and I started getting used to our new life with new friends; we started settling in. Then my father found himself in the hospital with a heart attack and we left a week or two later, suitcases in our hands, and the boxes left in storage. That was nearly 14 years ago.
My mother just had the boxes sent to her in her new flat here in Austin. I am sitting in her flat with my boxes a few feet away. What would you pack? My belongings include a sleeping bag (I wish I was kidding), some random trinkets and toys...and then it gets stranger. I found a bag with a bar of SOAP that someone gave me in a gift package for my thirteenth birthday...it smelled so good to me then, I didn't want to use it. I suppose this makes sense, I was raised by a man who was raised during the great depression and in Prague during WWII. Honestly, though, SOAP?! Then I found a guest key to a hotel we stayed at when I was five when we went to Hawaii.
I did find some amazing things, and the best of the finds surely has to be the scrapbook from the 30's, and one newspaper from December 7th, 1941 (from Honolulu). It is just amazing, I am so happy it found it's way back to me. Of course, on top of it lay a Cadillac hubcap...
OH, youth. I look forward to having time to fully explore these boxes...and what I must have been thinking as I packed...
So, this autumn day I came home to our crazy two story, seventy year old, gray wooden farm house to find my parents very agitated...and quite giddy. They were running around, sorting through household items, calling people, organizing the sale of...everything we owned. Then they drop it on me...Stephanie, we are moving to New York in three weeks and then moving to Prague. We are leaving in three weeks. You may have a suitcase and two boxes, you had better choose what you are keeping wisely.
If you were a thirteen year old, punky little girl, what would you pack? The very first thing I packed, into my suitcase so it wouldn't leave my sight at any moment, was the skateboard Melina gave me. It gets rather hazy from there...once I realized my parents were so busy getting our house packed up, organizing this big, crazy move, I took advantage as much as I could. I stopped going to my classes and hung out with the crazy stoner high-schoolers and middle-schoolers. I took advantage of the ridiculous amount of alcohol that my parents kept in the liquor cabinet, that wasn't coming with us on our journey. I spent a great many sunrises on the side of the hill, staring at clouds, listening to the buzz of the power plant whirring behind me and wishing I could sit on that hill forever.
The boxes were shipped to New York and put in storage, while we traveled for four days across country on a train (my parents felt the blow would be easier if they moved us on to a new life in an interesting way). In the winter my father went ahead of us to Prague to find an apartment. My sister and I started getting used to our new life with new friends; we started settling in. Then my father found himself in the hospital with a heart attack and we left a week or two later, suitcases in our hands, and the boxes left in storage. That was nearly 14 years ago.
My mother just had the boxes sent to her in her new flat here in Austin. I am sitting in her flat with my boxes a few feet away. What would you pack? My belongings include a sleeping bag (I wish I was kidding), some random trinkets and toys...and then it gets stranger. I found a bag with a bar of SOAP that someone gave me in a gift package for my thirteenth birthday...it smelled so good to me then, I didn't want to use it. I suppose this makes sense, I was raised by a man who was raised during the great depression and in Prague during WWII. Honestly, though, SOAP?! Then I found a guest key to a hotel we stayed at when I was five when we went to Hawaii.
I did find some amazing things, and the best of the finds surely has to be the scrapbook from the 30's, and one newspaper from December 7th, 1941 (from Honolulu). It is just amazing, I am so happy it found it's way back to me. Of course, on top of it lay a Cadillac hubcap...
OH, youth. I look forward to having time to fully explore these boxes...and what I must have been thinking as I packed...