I'd sincerely forgotten much about high school. It was kind of a whirlwind experience, since I left a year early to study in Germany and then came home and had Carter. But after examining the source materials, it looks like high school wasn't that bad of a time-- not as bad as I thought I remembered it was, anyway. I was in ski club, forensics, Odyssey of the Mind, and musicals. I loved Spanish and reading and writing. In the cover letter of my portfolio, I say I want to study communications, which I don't 100% remember wanting to do. And I was surprised at the number of things I'd written and included in my portfolio: a film review of Heathers, a music review of Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See, a Dean Koontz book review, several short stories and an ample collection of poetry (some of which was surprisingly not-bad for a high school kid).
Included in my box of high school memorabilia were: a pregnancy journal, a baby book, and baby keepsakes. The juxtaposition was a bit unsettling, but made me realize why I'd forgotten so much about high school. It's easy to take myself out of context sometimes, forgetting how I was just a kid, and then I just wasn't. Maybe it's normal to scatter pieces of ourselves along the trail like this? I often wonder how much of memory is picked up by the birds and how much might find its way back into our minds after being forgotten for so long.
(Yes, I realize I'm spending lots of time lately pretending not to think about Alzheimer's. Like, when you've written a poem about something and somebody says, "Hey! This poem is about a baby!" And you're like, "What? No. It's about chickens." And then you read it again, and think, "Damn. It is about a baby." It seems I've been trying to avoid the connection between memory and death for a long time, but I find it casually sneaking into everything I write. It feels like a monster under the bed. And I've decided to sleep through it for now.)
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