Ballet, there for you at the end of a hard day

Ok so there’s this box.
Somewhere in my parents house.
Packed it up eleven years ago. It’s my photo albums: baby, child, teenager; all the sketch books from, like, age can-just-hold-a-pencil up to seventeen; high school year books, and I don’t even remember what all else.
Basically, my past is in that box.
All physical evidence of pre-adult me.
Why didn’t I take it with me eleven years ago? Because I wanted it to be safe. I was driving into the unknown with a car full of stupid stuff like my rice-cooker. Rice-cooker was just Stuff. The Box needed to be safe.
So I left it.
And my parents lost it.
Somewhere in the house, oh yes sweetie I’m sure I’ve seen it…
See, I’ve been asking them to please send me The Box. Regularly. About twice a year ever since I got settled here. Only about twice a year because if I badger them about it they’ll get all irritable and refuse to look. Flew back recently and spent a day looking everywhere, no luck, could only conclude that it was either in that one locked shed, or it was really really gone.
Although they were still insisting, oh yes sweetie it’s around here somewhere…
Ok, fucking where? Gah!
…oh I’m sure I’ve seen it…
Ok, Next time you see it, howsabout sending it to me!!!
See, the other reason the box is so important to me is that the baby albums are full of pictures of my mother. She’s not dead or anything, nothing like that, but I was raised by my stepmother, and well, it was like my mother was dead for about ten and a half months of the year. Summers with her, then fly home and Never Speak Of It.
I understood by the time I was six and my sister was born- or technically half-sister, she’s my dad and step-mom’s kid- that it would’ve been better for my step-mom if she’d married a man with no kids from a previous marriage. This was just logical. It made sense. I accepted it.
Also, I understood that my sister is the favorite. This was just logical also, she’s their real kid, and she was a total brat, she really made them parent her, parents love that kind of stuff. It’s like proof of their good parenting.
Meanwhile, they’ve moved, they don’t know where the box is, but they’re pretty sure they saw it somewhere.
And I’m trying to get myself to be ok with the idea that the box is just gone,
When I get this email:
Hi, found the box with your sketchpads yearbooks photos etc.
Completely out of the blue. My first thought, seriously, and this is So Emo, Gentle Reader, was ‘Wow. He loves me. He knows how much what’s in that box means to me. He went and looked for it, on his own. He really loves me.’
Wrote back:
What?! No way! I’m so excited yay!!!
Then got this email:
ya…do you want it shipped out…your sister will be here in a few days and may want to paw through it…is ok?
Um, what?
What?
No! No, is Not ok. That stuff is mine! Can’t something just be Mine? Reminds me of that Hard Truth that all eldest children know: there is no such thing as sharing. Sharing implies I give you my toy, you give me your toy. Except that all your toys are baby toys that I don’t want to play with anyway. So “share with your sibling” really means Hand Over Your Toy.
Big Sisters, can I get a what-what?
So anyway I manage to write back a quick, lighthearted, ‘pls send right away can’t wait so excited can’t wait’ type email.
And just felt sad.
I know he loves me, I mean duh, he’s my dad, he has to. This just wasn’t the proof I thought it was.
He found the box because they’re preparing for some construction to the house. And he doesn’t know what finding that box means to me, or he wouldn’t have offered to let my sister paw through it.
I hope.
Seriously, “Paw through it.”
So I just felt sad.
And kind a worn out and empty.
And went to ballet really ready to work.

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