I've spent a big chunk of today erasing my past.  In going through my mother's drawers and files after her death last year, I kept encountering items that were too personal to throw away, but not valuable enough to keep:  old letters, photographs of her friends, etc.  She was the only person who could dispose of them in good conscience.

   I resolved then and there to go through my own boxes of personal ephemera and to dispose ruthlessly.   Today, I sorted through one large box and pulled out two garbage bags' worth, mostly old correspondence.  But of course I have to read through the letters once more before actually sending them through the shredder.

   Most date from the 1980s, when I was living in either Minnesota or Japan (Sendai, then later Tokyo).  Some are from girlfriends, some from high school friends, some from college mates.  What strikes me now is how goshdarn literate we were in the days before e-mail and, yes, blogs.  I am looking at a pile of hundreds of letters, most of them typewritten, many of them five or six pages long, single-spaced.   Some were composed over a series of days, even weeks.    The notes are alternately funny, sad, angry, narcissistic, caring, etc., but all bristle with delight at the sheer pleasure of stringing words together into sentences, paragraphs, pages.  

   Ah, to be carefree and young and to spend a lazy afternoon jotting down random thoughts in the silliest language possible.  We didn't have a clue then that we were creating chores for our middle-aged selves; all we wanted to do was play with words.