Being me
I was fascinated with feathers, fell in love with sweet bookmarks and coveted stickers of all kinds. Beautiful women and their gorgeous gowns enthralled me; a pile of newspaper cut-outs waiting to be placed in a scrapbook attested to that. All the letters I'd ever received were kept away in old ice-cream tubs, still in their original envelopes. Files held scraps of paper with lines of incomplete poems and pages of sermon notes.
Mom thought all these rubbish.
She always threatened to throw them all away, especially when the "environment" got a little too messy for her standards. "If you don't clear up, I'm going to chuck the lot out!" she'd say. It was a far cry from Mother Bhaer's attitude in Jo's Boys, and guaranteed to galvanise me into action. I lived in fear that she'd do as she said, and that, as a consequence, I'd irretrievably lose one of my precious scribblings.
So I came to be known as the "rubbish collector" in my family. The one who kept useless and valueless things. The pack rat. The one with too much "junk". I'd gather up the Christmas and Chinese New Year cards so I could use the pictures on my own cards, and Mom would say, "Keeping more junk, I see."
But of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I didn't agree with my parents' assessment. I treasured my possessions all the more fiercely for that, added to the hoard covertly, stopped talking to Mom and Dad about all the things that mattered. Because what mattered to me did not matter to them. They made fun of my penchant for pen-pals, thought making cards were a waste of time, and never expressed the slightest interest in my poetry.
When, at 15, we moved to a new house and I finally got my own room, I was ecstatic; finally, a place of my own, with lots of space for my treasures. It was a dream come true. We got to choose our own furniture and I chose a wooden bed frame with two built-in drawers, as well as a three-door wardrobe the third door opening to reveal four shelves and a drawer with a lock: the first really private place I'd ever had, where no prying eyes could reach.
I left home three years later to go to college, and it was even easier then; easier to be me. I built a whole new life, a separate life that my parents knew nothing about and which their disdain therefore couldn't touch. Unlike one of my roommates who would visit her hometown every weekend, I went home only during semester breaks, when there was no excuse not to and when it was expected of me. Coming back to the city was always a relief and a joy.
Now in my ninth year here, I continue to be thankful that I live away from home. These days my greatest treasures would, perhaps, be my books. As usual, Mom and Dad deem all these tomes a waste of money, an unnecessary expense. And as always, I am silent before my parents but my love affair with the printed word lives on.
