Of Jam and Memory

Some twenty years ago, I packed up all of my earthly belongings and returned to college.  I had dropped out after my freshman year to follow my heart around the world to chase after belief, love and discipline.  (Hey, I kept two out of three!)  I was returning to school with a wife and a baby, driving two thirds of the way across the country from the Pacific to Lake Michigan, across the Rockies in January.  Into boxes went our most treasured possessions, packed away for storage.  We folded the boxes shut around babythings and photos and music and notes.  We packed away a couple of kilos of my Academic Decathlon medals, physical evidence of the only time I ever defeated ginger_rose in an academic competition.  We packed away a jar full of love notes she had sent me one Valentine’s Day before I proposed.  We packed away her Star Trek paperbacks that I had read while feeling all creeped out at her parents’ house during our courtship (more than a few of them A.C. Crispin novels).  We packed away my sketches and designs of the homestead we have yet to build.  We packed away the little painting I have of the Charles Bridge in Prague, where I was nearly arrested for preaching on the street.   We packed away six jars of wild plum jam that her mother had made one summer in southern Oregon, wrapped in the local Cave Junction newspaper.

( These were dear memories, all. )