Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Luggage (08/15/05)
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TITLE: The Treasure Chest | Previous Challenge Entry
By Clay Drysdale
08/21/05 -
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Last night I felt a responsibility to be productive; I washed dishes and finished some work on the computer. All the while I listened to music of my choice until my heart was content.
Tonight, however, I decided to do something that I had not done in probably three or four years. Out of the closet I retrieved an old green suitcase dating from the 1940's or 50's that I bought at a yard sale circa 1991. Inside it I have stored treasures of various journal entries, fiction pieces, bits of poetry, and even a few drawings, that span my teenage and adult years. The earliest journal entry dates back 23 years.
Every so often, when I get an urge to do so, I pull out this suitcase. It is brimming with memories - some pleasant, some painful, some forgotten, some unforgettable, but all remarkable in the story that they paint of my life. If I were to re-experience these memories too often, they would probably become cold and meaningless to me. But by unearthing them only on rare occasions, they always amaze me with the intense thought (and sometimes rare glimpses of wisdom and insight) that I expressed over the years, sometimes even as a teenager.
An entry written during my senior year of high school expresses my joy at gazing into the deep green eyes of my childhood pet, a Labrador mix named Ted. I felt a closeness and oneness with him that had grown steadily over the years since he first arrived at my home on a Sunday night long ago.
I read of the multitude of anxieties a scared 18-year-old experienced in the weeks and days before leaving home to attend college almost 300 miles away. Was this college the right choice for me? Should I attend one closer to home? These words penned long ago leave the impression that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As a side note, my beloved Ted mentioned above, would die the day after I left.
Later entries deal with the ebb and flow of my emotions during those college years. Handwritten words describe a time, long forgotten by now, when I simply sat and watched the stream of students flow through the courtyard, wondering where they were going and what they were thinking; I've always enjoyed people watching. Journal entries written during my last semester in college detail a numbing boredom with school, a deep desire to be done with my education, yet a gnawing fear of what adult life held in store for me.
I found a story describing the adventures of Sylvia, a young wildcat with human traits and emotions, which I began writing as a freshman in college, wrote a few more paragraphs of the following year, and yet more of the year after that. Maybe now, 15 years later, I'll try to finish it...
Inside an envelope I came across a letter I wrote to my son, who was not even born or conceived at that time. In it I pour out my emotions at losing my father - his grandfather - a year earlier. I knew that my father would have loved to see him. I lament how he would never have the opportunity to cradle my son in his arms, gazing at him with warmth and pride through joyful tears.
Finding time for writing became harder and harder as the responsibilities of being a husband and father gradually increased; the suitcase holds only a few items written after 1994. It has been only in the last year or so that I have written on a regular basis again.
It is interesting to compare those early entries, handwritten by an 8th grader on small sheets of stiff yellow paper, to that written as an adult, using a word processor and having the capability to publish my words for the whole world to read, using just a few keystrokes.
Times change and technology improves, but the range and intensity of human emotion remain constant over the years, no matter how it is expressed in writing. I learn this anew each time I open my treasure chest.
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