A note from a co-conspirator in the great Kentucky getaway scheme. Arranging for a phone call. She is the person who will vouch for my wellbeing during this so-called innocuous visit. It's all very hush hush. You may recall, this is the trip I made to Louisville, KY to spend the weekend with my fiancee' who was then in the army, and the gyrations we had to go through to fool my parents, his parents, the hotel - you name it. This simply wasn't done it my set in those days. Not openly, anyway. Oh - we were all having sex, or about to have sex, or something like that, but our mothers never knew about it. Not mine, anyway. It simply wasn't done.

My very first postcard from New York City. I didn't get there until 1996. My college friend Charline. They are staying at the Astor, the "crossroads of the world" in Times Square. The postcard is a nice watercolor of the Astor, "750 air-conditioned guest rooms each with television and radio." "Telephone JUdson 6-3000."

November 16, 1962. Letter from mom. I am coming home for the weekend. She says don't bring laundry - she won't have time to do it (like I couldn't? probably not) and to bring her pie carrier. I must have taken one of mom's pies off to college with me.

I started a poem years and years ago which began:

I don't remember my mother
When she was there.
I don't remember how she wore her hair.

I have pictures, but I have no real memories. No scents. No sounds. No pictures in my head. Just stories. Just myths.

Another letter from mom. February 3, 1963. My grandparents and aunt (mom's parents and sister) have been to visit. My grandmother left some pillow cases she embroidered for my birthday. She told mom they were for my hope chest. I loved my grandmother so much. I know I dashed her hopes. I wish I still had the pillow cases. I wish I knew where they were. Petty regrets. My life has been long and full and interesting, and the only real regrets I have are these petty ones. Those and the alternate lives I sometimes miss, but would not miss what I have in fact had. Make sense? I didn't think so.

Mother chides me for forgetting my social security card when applying for a job, saying the fact that I didn't have it with me is a bad sign to a future employer right there. I think I regarded such minor details as social security cards as some sort of right wing anti-intellectual sub-plot that had nothing to do with my real life. I never actually wanted a job.

Birdwatching again this weekend. Snipe. I remember girl scout camps, where we would take newcomers on nightly snipe hunts. The kicker was that there were no such things as snipe. Yes, actually, there are.