The Things I Leave Behind

I burned this:
01/19/94
Dear Stephany L Smith Pearson

Congratulations! you have completely paid off your education loans starred (*) below. Your original promissory notes are enclosed, marked "Paid in Full."

Enclosed were handwritten loan applications dated 3/13/87. Under "address" I listed Roca Street, Ashland. Under dependents I listed 2, ages 4 yrs and 7 months. The document had lived in some bank file cabinet for seven years while I worked and scrimped to pay my student loans. It is hand stamped "Paid" in beautiful blue ink. It served as a talisman for many years, but I can leave it behind. I don't need it any more.

I burned the the tuition bills I paid for Arly to attend the University of Oregon. I burned the notes I made at the meeting for parents before she left for her student exchange in Guanajuato.

I tried, but I couldn't burn the list she made prior to her departure: "Clothes, Shoes, Bathroom stuff, Books, School supplies, Pictures, Jewelry, Passport + stuff" written in her neat child's hand. I'll be ready to burn them some day, but not yet.

Is nostalgia merely a mask for regret? Do I romanticize the past in order to dodge responsibilty for the poor choices I made, the damage I did?

I'm feeling the need to purge, but obviously there are some things I'm not ready to release. Conversely I create a file for each of my daughters and seeded them cryptic but significant odds and ends: the drawing a friend made for Kiva when she was born, a cartoon she drew in high school, postcards Arly sent home from her travels.

I imagine them sorting through my crap after I'm dead, just as I did after my parents died, just as Sequoia is now doing for his dad, that inevitable, eye-opening task. I imagine each of them finding her coded message and trying to figure out what it means. I wish I knew.

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