CHAPTER 1 - AMONG MY SOUVENIRS

            Ah, the holidays! Perhaps the only thing more enjoyable than celebrating with the parents is standing at the door waving good-bye when they finally pack up and shove off for home. Fish and company stink in three days, according to the old adage, but I'm convinced that relatives have a somewhat shorter shelf life. In retrospect, though, it was a successful celebration. Wonder of wonders, there were no major battles, and no blood was spilled.

            I love my parents, but I enjoy their company most in small doses. The enforced togetherness of this Christmas visit had proven to be physically and emotionally exhausting. Between my mother's constant litany of mind-numbing minutiae and my father's incessant criticism and complaints there were times when I thought I would surely lose my mind. However my wits have survived, if not always thrived, four-plus decades, so I suppose I can take comfort in the knowledge that my sanity is most probably unassailable.

            Watching the taillights of my parents' ten-year-old white Cadillac disappear around the corner, I heaved a guilty but heartfelt sigh of relief. The house was quiet and empty once again and my jealously guarded privacy had finally been reclaimed. The only evidence of my departed guests was the nondescript cardboard box, slightly more than a foot square, sitting on the straight-backed chair beside the front door and bearing the printed legend, Maggie's Stuff. My mother had unearthed the box during her last cleaning spree and had chosen this visit to return it to me, with the tender admonition, "You're a grown woman. It's time you kept up with your own crap!" Well, gee whiz, how can I refuse when you put it so sweetly?

            Having surpassed my tolerance threshold for Christmas music sometime in early November, I went to the stereo and selected something suitably nostalgic and utterly secular as the soundtrack by which to open my serendipitous time capsule. Picking out Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young So Far, I selected the random mode on my CD player and poured myself a glass of white wine. I was infinitely grateful that my staunchly Southern Baptist deacon father was safely on his way back to San Antonio so that I was spared yet another lecture on the evils of strong drink. After carrying my glass and the box to the middle of the living room floor, I sank, cross-legged, onto the braided rug. While the familiar strains of Jerry Garcia's pedal steel guitar introduction began CSN&Y's musical exhortation to Teach Your Children, I pushed up my sleeves and prepared to disembowel the dusty corpse.

            Singing along with the familiar words of a song that I would forever associate with the bygone era of my 1960's childhood, I inspected the contents of the box. The yearbooks from my junior and senior years at Incarnate Word High School in San Antonio were on top, and the items beneath appeared to be of a similar vintage. There was a bundle of my old report cards bound with a rubber band, which disintegrated from age the moment I tried to remove it. Mostly A's and B's, I reflected as I flipped through the loose stack. Straight A's in biology, though. Oddly enough, I couldn't remember having any unusual enthusiasm for that particular subject. I found a faded spirit ribbon from a long-forgotten basketball game. Who won? Who cares? And why, in heaven's name, did I bother to save it? There was even a picture torn from a 60's teen magazine, probably either 16 or Tiger Beat, the two magazines I'd read most frequently in my pre-teen years. I had such a huge crush on Davy Jones when I was ten! How'd that get in here? Further excavation yielded ancient copies of the school newspaper, some ticket stubs and a program from the choir's Christmas Cantata. Hmm. My friend, Gayla, sang one of the solos. I wonder whatever happened to her. I was a little disappointed. Most of this stuff was clearly garbage, and I tossed it into a pile to discard.

            Just as I was about to give up on the whole project as a total waste of time, I uncovered the wooden cigar box. My heart skipped a beat just before it jumped into my throat. I recognized the box immediately. It was closed with a diminutive heart-shaped padlock, the kind that must have come from a bubblegum machine, more decorative than functional. The key itself was long gone. I remembered throwing it off of a bridge on the Riverwalk in San Antonio a lifetime ago in a fit of teenage histrionics. However, the deficiency was easily remedied. Crawling over to my desk, I retrieved a paperclip. One strategic bend and a twist of the wrist later, the little lock yielded easily to me.

            Feeling like Pandora, even though I already knew what I was going to find inside, I lifted the tarnished hasp and slowly raised the lid. There on the very top was an envelope with the handwritten direction, Not at This Address - Return to Sender. I realized that I'd been holding my breath, and I took a gasping gulp of air as my suspicion was confirmed. In addition to the letter there were some photographs, a slim volume of poetry, a small round music box wrapped in layers of tissue, and an old metal Sucrets tin.

            I picked up the book first. It was in pristine condition, slipcased, bound in red leather, gilt-edged, and gold stamped with the title, Poems of Love and Friendship. It was a gift given to a sixteen-year-old girl by her first love. His name was Michael, and it was a going away present.

            My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking. I took a sip of wine, another deep breath, and then I slid the book from its heavy sleeve and opened the cover. The inscription was there on the flyleaf in the bold, strong handwriting that I remembered very well:

My dearest Magnolia,
            Love is the most precious gift. Thank you for giving that gift to me. You have a beautiful soul and wisdom beyond your years. Though the miles may come between us, you will be forever in my heart.
                                    Love,
                                    Michael

            There was a lump in my throat, and the words on the page swam though a watery veil of tears. Overwhelmed by a torrent of memories, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. So I did both.

            I glanced at the inscription again. I had forgotten about the notation in parenthesis beneath Michael's name. It read simply, page 27. This time I took a couple of deep breaths and drained my wineglass in a single swallow before I flipped through the stiff, creamy-smooth pages. The indicated place had been bookmarked with a square card. It was an extremely sentimental and melodramatic poem by some unknown author entitled, Is It a Sin to Love Thee? Whether the poet was unknown because the verse was too middling for the authorship to matter or because the versifier had just been embarrassed to claim it was a matter open to some speculation.

            My current opinions aside, however, at the impressionable age of 16 years I'd thought it was the most romantic poem that I'd ever read in my life, and I'd wept over each stanza as though it were a Shakespearean sonnet.

Is it a sin to love thee? Then my soul is deeply dyed,
For my lifeblood, as it gushes, takes its crimson from love's tide;
And I feel its waves roll o'er me and the blushes mount my brow
And my pulses quicken wildly, as the love dreams come and go:
I feel my spirit's weakness; I know my spirit's power;
I have felt my proud heart struggle in temptation's trying hour;
Yet, amid the din of conflict, bending o'er life's hallowed shrine,
Yielding all, my soul had murmured, I am thine, forever thine!

            The poem continued in a similar vein for four more excruciatingly bombastic stanzas, articulating sentiments that had been more concisely and pithily expressed by that old Barbara Mandrell song, "If Lovin' You is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right." I shook my head in amazement that I had once considered this drivel to be immortal verse, and continued reading until the poet mercifully concluded with these lines:

Is it a sin to love thee? When I bend the knee in prayer,
And before a High Omniscience my burdened heart lay bare,
On the breath of love to heaven ascends thy blessed name,
And I plead weak and erring nature, if loving thee be shame.
Heaven knows 'tis no light sacrifice I've offered up to thee,
No gilded dream of fancy, but my being's destiny.
Since our fates we may not conquer here, divide thy lot from mine
In the starlit world above us, call me thine - forever thine!

            I flipped over the card that had been holding the place. It was a photograph of Michael James Donovan . . . age 25.

            A 25-year-old man addressing the sentiments of such a poem to a 16-year old girl could be called inappropriate at the very least, and under certain circumstances morally reprehensible and ultimately criminal. Though any protest of mine to the contrary will surely sound like the justifications of someone deeply mired in denial, that truly wasn't the way things were. Of course, no one could be expected to believe me unless they'd been there, unless they'd known Michael.

            I looked more closely at the picture. The person who had once seemed so mature and wise to me now looked like hardly more than a boy himself. I saw a fresh, young face, smooth and unlined. His blue eyes were bright and hopeful, and a silky shock of glossy brown hair fell across a noble forehead still unlined by time and care. He was a handsome young man, tall and gangly with a strong jaw and an engaging smile. Sitting on a porch bent over a 12-string guitar, the expression on his face was wistful and heartrendingly sweet. Some secret mirth had teased one corner of his sensuous mouth into a winsome smile. No wonder I fell in love with him.

            Unfortunately, Michael was also the one great regret of my life, the regret beside which all others pale to irrelevance in comparison. He was forever unfinished business, a resounding What if? that has haunted me for nearly 30 years.

            I lay back on the rug and stared at the ceiling. The undulating shadows cast by the blinking Christmas tree lights had a hypnotic effect making it easy to lose myself in reverie. I'd spent the better part of my adult life trying not to think about Michael or the events of that long-ago summer - with varying degrees of success. At this stage of my life, I was normally rather good at letting the dead past stay buried. There were still times though, when something as innocuous as a snatch of melody drifting from a passing car or the scent of sweet clover on the summer breeze would bring it all back to me as powerfully as a physical blow.

            As overwhelming as they could be at the moment, my occasional flashbacks tended to cause me no more than a passing emotional pang, like an old war wound that only throbs in damp weather. Just sometimes though, if my spirits were low or my hormones in flux, the rush of memories had a more debilitating effect, setting me adrift on a sea of melancholy for which there was little help but to endure until the passage of time brought me once again to shore.

            I could already tell that this was going to be one of the rough times. Abstract memories are one thing, but archaeological evidence is something altogether different. Visiting a battlefield memorial doesn't have quite the same impact as walking among the dead. Those artifacts from my past had opened a floodgate of emotion that would better have remained closed. And, just like the Pandora of myth, I was powerless to force the plagues back into the box now that they'd been loosed upon humanity. This time, even hope seemed to have escaped. So I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to the past.