T.

Revisiting What have you saved from childhood theme....
so much sadness there, from my readers: fire, abandonment,
disposal. Today I threw away LOTS of "memorabilia",
most of it NOT AT ALL WORTH SAVING. But for some reason
or other I saved it. And now it's gone and my heart is untetherered.

Five big boxes for the recycling.
Three big boxes of garbage.
Many Goodwill donations.
And still there remains countless more.
But finally, it feels like progress.
I told N. that I felt as if I had gone back
at least five lifetimes. (N. -- bless his heart --
carried out the recycling. In heavy rain.)

Perhaps the most amusing item I ran across
is a newspaper accounting of my first wedding
by my children's great-grandmother, Edna P. Couch,
who wrote for the Kentwood News Journal. (That's
Kentwood, Louisiana, home of, yes, Brittany! Spears!)
(Or is is Britney!? These things are difficult.)
Anyway, the cleansed accounting of the festivities
included, apparently, a "nice ham supper after the wedding
at the home of the groom's parents." Hmm. Not exactly
as I remember it: no ham, lots of alcohol. And, during the
ceremony we were serenaded by the "Seattle Symphony Band."
Huh? Never heard of them. Well. Louisiana is pretty much
another country, and who's to question the 1983 doings
of a Seattle wedding? And I have to admit that there is
some kind of Southern charm at work when the journalistic
account of a farway event is edited to fit the mores
of the community in which the article appears. Bad journalism,
yes, but is it really journalism in the first place?


Oh. Quaint, I suppose, all these years later.
And it's not exactly CNN.