Just when you thought all your secrets from a dark and distant past were lost forever in your bottomless clandestine closet, out they come tumbling when in one fell swoop, your mother rips apart the curtains covering them and what was regarded beyond recollection comes hurtling back into one's consciousness. You would think your sibling of so many years would try to distract your mother and destroy everything before the proverbial cat is out of the bag. Then you realise the ludicrousness of the very thought and resign yourself to a weekend full of taunts and ridicule.
It was puerile scribblings that they found mostly, and the occasional colourless work of art. Pubescent pieces of poetry were gleefully lapped up, as were my infantile rants about playground failings and the inherent callousness of the fairer sex. I was deeply embarrassed to find that these journals from my childhood had stood the test of time and survived for long enough so as to rear their ugly head right when it was time to cut all ties with the house I grew up in. According to some of the entries, I was also a budding crime-solver as a kid. The astutely recorded catalog of clues and evidences along with my inferences following interrogations with the suspects bearing testimony to the fact.
But that wasn't even the worst part about moving. The worst part was that all the packing was well over when I reached town, only about in time to say goodbye. There could be a thousand relics or more that just vanished without yours truly ever getting to see them one last time. Mother did save a few things that she deemed important to me, like the school farewell graffiti shirt and an ancient birthday card from a very old friend. Good job mom.
Leaving was hard, an exercise involving immense self-restraint in the face of extreme sadness. It is at such times that women-folk unabashedly let the water works run free, while grown men adopt a veneer of stoicism, preferring to cry deep inside. And children, they don't appear to give a hoot either ways. I was fine on the whole, considering home had ceased to be the same for me anyway in the last 4 years. But that final glimpse of the empty house did give me a heady rush of nostalgia, as the 15 odd years I spent there flashed before my eyes and made me want to stay for a little while longer.
It was puerile scribblings that they found mostly, and the occasional colourless work of art. Pubescent pieces of poetry were gleefully lapped up, as were my infantile rants about playground failings and the inherent callousness of the fairer sex. I was deeply embarrassed to find that these journals from my childhood had stood the test of time and survived for long enough so as to rear their ugly head right when it was time to cut all ties with the house I grew up in. According to some of the entries, I was also a budding crime-solver as a kid. The astutely recorded catalog of clues and evidences along with my inferences following interrogations with the suspects bearing testimony to the fact.
But that wasn't even the worst part about moving. The worst part was that all the packing was well over when I reached town, only about in time to say goodbye. There could be a thousand relics or more that just vanished without yours truly ever getting to see them one last time. Mother did save a few things that she deemed important to me, like the school farewell graffiti shirt and an ancient birthday card from a very old friend. Good job mom.
Leaving was hard, an exercise involving immense self-restraint in the face of extreme sadness. It is at such times that women-folk unabashedly let the water works run free, while grown men adopt a veneer of stoicism, preferring to cry deep inside. And children, they don't appear to give a hoot either ways. I was fine on the whole, considering home had ceased to be the same for me anyway in the last 4 years. But that final glimpse of the empty house did give me a heady rush of nostalgia, as the 15 odd years I spent there flashed before my eyes and made me want to stay for a little while longer.
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