Legacy Matters
From neo-neo con. Ah, the joy of organizing: going through old papers.
Going through much of it is a strangely emotional experience. Old cards--birthdays, anniversaries, loves gained and lost. Photos of me and my boyfriend who went to Vietnam, and his last letter, the only one I saved (for those of you who haven't read my posts on that subject: yes, he did return, but no, we didn't marry). Photos from college--me, impossibly young, sporting one of those long flippy "do's" that required setting on rollers the size of beer cans; old friends from that era, some of them now dead. Poems that make me cry when I stop to read them. My diplomas. A photocopy of the check from Central Casting Corporation I got for doing a "silent bit" as a dancer in the film "The Turning Point" (see this).
In one file entitled "School--grades and awards" are all my old report cards (height: 48 1/4 inches, weight, 51 pounds, first grade). Even now those report cards have the power to stir a hint of anxiety in me, remembering the drama of the reading of the names and the doling out of the little cardboard squares representing so much work. My SAT scores. My GRE scores. My scholarships, and some newspaper clippings announcing same. A little card of commendation with a gold star on it, given to me in third grade for a bunch of poems I wrote, illustrated, and compiled into a scrapbook for extra credit and for fun ("Snowflakes falling, down, down, down...)
Letters from a few famous people I wrote to who had the decency to write back, some at great length (Oliver Sacks, for one). A huge file of poetry I like that isn't anthologized in any books I own. My own poetry, with many different alternative drafts (ah, my biographer will be so grateful!) A folder filled with the condolence letters people wrote my mother when my grandmother died in the late 60s, which still have the power to evoke her warm presence and vitality.