Saturday, December 05, 2020

The Little Orange Box With the Dog On Top

It's just a little box.  Slightly larger than a standard letter envelope and maybe an inch tall. I don't remember it's original purpose, only that I asked Mom if I could have it. It was the perfect box in which to keep my little collection of letters. In time I glued a magazine picture of a floppy dog on top to make it look more special. For a good portion of my childhood, and well into my teenage years, it was kept safe in my dresser, tucked into a corner of a drawer. I always knew exactly where it was.

Every so often during my school aged years, a new letter would turn up in the mail box hanging just outside our front door. Mom always seemed just as excited as me. If I happened to be down the street playing, she would call out that a letter had arrived and I would run home as fast as I possibly could. Once the letter had been open, read, and savored, it would be placed into the little box along with the others. By the time the collection was complete there would be a total of fourteen letters received over the course of 8 to 9 years. From 1973 to 1982.

The story started when a new family moved into our neighborhood. The brother and sister rode my bus and the boy was in my grade, but not in my class, The house they lived in with their cousins was down the street and around the corner in a place I often passed but never hung out. It was only when I took my dog for a walk around the block that the little boy's sister asked my name and said, "My brother loves you." Not long after that meeting my mom noticed a little boy walking back and forth, and hanging out in front of our house as if he was looking for someone. "Who's that out there?" she asked and I replied "Oh, that's Joey," and promptly decided to take the dog for another walk.

I've written about Joey a few other times. Our friendship ended abruptly. Almost violently abrupt. There was no chance for me to explain, no undoing what had transpired between letters, only the heartbreaking knowledge that my final letter would wound him deeply and I would never ever hear from him again. A piece of me died when I answered his letter in January of 1982. A piece of me still grieves.  I've let the memories go over and over again, yet our friendship was such an integral part of my childhood that those memories come back time and time again, usually when I least expect them. It's almost as though I am missing something important but don't know what I'm supposed to be finding.

Memories can be painful, even good memories. Every corner of this house holds memories, a whole lifetime of memories. The wall reverberate with them. When the house is still and quiet, and my present family is gone, voices from the past are speaking. Not only are Mom and Dad here, but my sisters, and others as well. I don't literally hear voices, of course, but the past is intensely vivid and I miss those days gone by...

8 comments:

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    1. My parents took another needy friend (Chip/James)of mine into our home in late December of 1979. At the time he was dating my best friend, but they broke up and he began to pursue me. Relentlessly. I cared for him deeply, and he chipped slowly away at my resolve until by early 1981 I was pregnant with our first child. (I can't even begin to explain the tangle of confused thoughts and emotions I held back then. A 16 year old should never be put in that kind of situation.) I chose to keep my baby and married Chip. We were 17. I should have been a senior in high school... Joey lived 500 miles away. He was partly best friend, partly figment of my imagination, bt least that's what people told me, but I knew a letter would eventually come and I would have to write back and tell him that Chip (James) and I had gotten married... Mine and Joey's story was over before it ever began, and maybe that is what God planned all along. On my end, every childhood hope of ever being together again crushed. The reality is we met as children and fell in love. I loved him deeply, and the sense of loss was intense. My adult friends knew nothing of Joey, but all my childhood friends knew. It's a story that would take long chapters to write and it still feels incomplete. Like it needs some kind of closure I am unable to find.

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  2. Martha, Even young love is real. Our young minds may not know how to work things out, but our hearts still love and can hurt. Hope you meet Joey again one day. Blessings, xoxo, Susie

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    1. Susie, I still love him. Maybe in a different way than I did as a child or young woman. He is a stranger now and I love him still. Such a silly girl. I do hope one day our paths will cross again.

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  3. Tender and tragic.
    Martha, you are an amazing writer. Your words evoke so many emotions in me.
    Thanks for your transparency. There definitely is healing in that.
    Sue

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    1. Tender and tragic. Yes.
      The sense of loss was overwhelming years ago. I held onto James with every fiber of my being. It HAD to work. I'd sacrificed too many dreams to let it fail...

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  4. I have to say my heart is feeling just what Sue said in her comment. We never forget a first love, a first feeling of a heart flutter. Childhood memories like these are part of who we are. I had two...Ronny, and Jerry. They were part of my love and tears as a young girl.

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    1. I invested so much heart energy into a long distance relationship as a little girl. It's really almost pathetic, but all the emotions were there. I cried my eyes out so many nights, and all before I ever met James. And James, he was the only one who ever made me forget about Joey... I don't long for Joey today. Instead I am intrigued. I have no desire for what he has and I could never compete with the woman he married. He is simply a piece of my story, and one which deeply influences who I am even today.

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