My daughter wore these golden shitkickers in kindergarten. She was (and remains) simultaneously delightful and dangerous.

My graduate school thesis, 1994.

I fucking love fiscal policy.

The bane of my youth. Twenty-five cents per page to print! The injustice!

I have every letter ever mailed to me, and most that I mailed to others. Every postcard, every photo, every court order and medical transcript, every shred of evidence that it all happened, exactly as described. Including the records pertinent to my teenage marriage.

I’m old enough now to feel generous, even if I will never be nostalgic. I want to believe we were just messed up kids trying to find a home. And I know that concepts like “love” and “forever” rarely survive cancer, or war.

My entire Barbie collection, intact, including clothes and accessories.

Does it seem like I have saved perhaps…. too much stuff?

Why yes, it does.

As a child I marched in the Whaling Days parade every year, either twirling a baton or in the back of a vintage car owned by my Lavender grandfather. It never occurred to me at the time to wonder why the town would celebrate whaling, or for that matter, what “whaling” might be.

I transplanted these from the family homestead in Poulsbo so long ago I can’t even remember.

This is the only living connection to my grandmother; I remember her best in her garden.

How I funded my summer at the Governors’ School for Citizen Leadership, age 17.

Hanging with the secret kitten at the Chicken House (shhhh).

Talking to current residents it seems that nobody remembers the years in which I was banned from visiting. Nor do the new folks seem to know anything about the controversy surrounding the establishment of the house, when “No Chickens” signs were posted in the windows of restaurants and cafes on Alberta.

In fact they didn’t really believe me on either score… but of course I have documentary evidence for my claims.

Remember when Cherry Sprout was Big City, and only sold collard greens?

Better yet: remember when Mississippi Ave was boarded up, and you couldn’t buy any food at all within 10 blocks of the Alberta Albina intersection? No?

I really don’t recognize my old neighborhood any longer.