Two bags full

I was a kindergarten dropout so I had low social skills. Desperate for a playmate, I decided to visit a little girl down the road, even when she was a year younger than me, and not in my class. I was young, perhaps five-going-on-six, and I want to play with my neighbor down the road. But I didn’t know what to bring, so I loaded up two shopping bags with my most precious toys. Stephanie, who graduated from kindergarten, met me at the end of her driveway, the halfway mark. The bags must’ve been heavy as I had set them down to catch my breath. Her father said something under his breath, I didn’t understand his remark, but it was probably a derogatory aside, probably something about being a young bag lady in training. Les Stone was overly protective of Stephanie, who was a year younger than me, a year and two days to be exact. I was so pleased to finally have a playmate my age. Billy Joe Bianchi was two years older than me, and didn’t want to play with girls. His sister, Cottie moved away when Joe and Irene divorced. So I lived alone at the end of the road. I was willing to put up with shame, for I did feel shame—as I knew on some level Stephanie’s father was making fun of me. He always thought I was a bad influence on her because I had no visible parents, only a grandmother. But Steph and I became inseparable blood sisters. I don’t remember what was in the bags. If I were to peek inside those two bags now, they were the kind with rolled twine handles—like the ones from Macy’s, not grocery store bags. One bag was filled with doll parts and doll clothes. The other held my art supplies. A watercolor set, crayons, a coloring book, and the treasured detritus of childhood. A china tea set, with pieces missing, a rag doll, and other oddities. Hoarding began at an early age. I learn to compartmentalize, to categorize my belongings as it seems that I was always on the run. Of course I was, the break-up of family, my grandfather’s death, selling the city house, the aunts in the uncles scattered. My mother‘s marriage falling apart at the seams, my father‘s disappearance into the neck of the bottle. I arrived at the house at the end of the road with bags that I never unpacked—eventually evolving into the go-bag of today, a necessity during a time of wildfires. I began early, isolating parts of myself. Baggage, excavating my past.

2/17/22 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick