12.2.10 – Unexpected Package

When I checked my mail last night upon arriving home there was a package. I hadn’t ordered anything, and as I received a package last week outside my door for my neighbor, I assumed this must also be for her, except my name was on it and it was from Tampa. Bringing it inside I was tempted to leave it for later as I had plans last night, but I was curious. Then my insane paranoia hit and I started thinking it could be a mail bomb, but by that time the scissors were in my hand. As soon as I had the flap open I saw photos of myself as a child. I was right – it was a mail bomb, but of the emotional sort.

I immediately went through the whole box, scattering the images all over my couch. I was horrified that my sister had just literally dumped the images in a box and sent them to me, not even bothering to place the smaller images in a shoebox or bag, but then my siblings always were careless. I’m not sure if it was the carelessness or having my past show up out of nowhere that caused me to cry uncontrollably for what seemed forever. After I got myself together again, I went out and did my best to forget about the pictures, at least until I got home and saw them staring back at me on couch and then started crying again.

It’s strange, a number of the images I have no recollection of, and others seem different than what I remembered. It makes me think back to a documentary on Vik Muniz, who did a series of drawings on famous photographs. It wasn’t until you saw the drawing and photograph side by side that you noticed the differences and how the mind changes things. Mostly I keep noticing how disheveled I looked as a child, and wonder whether it was due to my own strong will or my mother’s depression.

Many of the images have faded or were damaged from being removed from pre-acid-free photo albums. Still, it’s nice to finally have them back and be able to look at them again. I remember last year feeling very sad when you were supposed to put up a picture of yourself as a child on Facebook and I couldn’t, as I didn’t have any. Well, I’ve put one up now, belatedly.

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