L.A. Story

My trip to L.A. was pretty enjoyable and many ideas for blogger posts came to mind, so I’ve decided to put them up one-by-one.

On Monday morning, I was to make the drive back home to the Bay Area.  There was no rush, however.  I had taken Interstate 5 on the way down but I wanted to take 101 back north so that I could pass by Pismo Beach and otherwise have a less monotonous drive.  I certainly took my time; I made it home eight hours after I left L.A.  Before leaving, Andy took me on a tour of the UCLA campus, which was void of people but beautiful in its brick-veneer.  We noticed that there were a ton of parking spaces.  Back at his place, I gathered my things together to take off when Andy pulled out the envelope.  It was all of the memorabilia of Raquel.  It’s like something out of a music video…I had taken down all of the photos of her and letters and whatever else — and there was a lot of it — and stuffed it into an envelope.  I sent it down south to Andy so that I wouldn’t be tempted to look at it.  It was as if had been thinking about her for two years straight and if the envelope had been anywhere within my reach I wouldn’t have been able to force myself to forget and move on.  So, it was off to the Post Office and all of it was gone…until yesterday morning.

Looking through it was enjoyable.  I may have taken a couple of deep breaths over photos I know I had treasured more than others.  The real joy, what I had forgotten about, were those letters.  All handwritten (except for the last one) on lovely stationery and just so much care and love put into each word.  They’re back in the envelope now; even mentioning her twice in one month on this blog is closer to getting carried away than I want to tread.  But that’s why we keep precious things; to reflect on the happiest moments and to marvel at how far we’ve come.