Hallelujah! After 2 1/2 years, Mom is officially out of her old apartment. She hasn’t been living there since she bought her place in my building, but instead has been using the two bedroom, 2 bathroom dwelling as an expensive storage facility. The silliness of paying rent on top of a mortgage and maintenance is at last at an end.

Every week or so, she would come to my apartment with a bag of my old belongings in hand: old clothes, notebooks, textbooks, pictures, and teeny bopper magazines. Usually, I would sift through these things and end up dumping them in the trash. If I hadn’t thought about them in 20 years, I certainly didn’t want to clutter my apartment with them now. But her last trip brought me back something interesting…a bag full of letters.

My goodness, I can’t believe how many there were. It seemed foreign to me to have to read actual handwriting when I’ve been so accustomed to e-mails. There were letters from friends I remembered from my youth, and others that I had no idea who the hell they were! Some were from people I must have met in passing, others from my acting days and a smattering of notes from interested young bucks.

What caught my interest the most was a bundle of correspondence from a boy I met when I was traveling around Egypt and Israel back in 1984. His name was Anthony. A blond haired, brown eyed 14 year old from England, who I fell into immediate puppy love with while cruising down (up?) the Nile. Seeing the postmarks, I realized we had written back and forth for nearly a year. And, oh, the drama of it all! It’s amazing how teenagers earnestly try to mimic adult love affairs.

There was a bunch of hand written letters and mushy greeting cards all with iridescent, sparkly sticker hearts decorating the envelopes. He professed his undying love to me in each one. And also in almost every exchange, he was begging me to come visit him at his summer house in Italy. This I remember vividly: the crying and screaming matches I had with my parents begging them to let me go.

Of course, I wasn’t allowed to travel to Europe by myself at that age and thus, never saw him again. I never understood why they were so against this until I read his letters with an adult’s eye. Yeesh! A 15 year old adolescent boy with raging hormones only had one thing on his mind, and I was too innocent to realize it. Thanks Mom and Dad!

I still have my old high school yearbooks to look though. That should be an interesting trip down memory lane. I will relive my infatuation with the senior I was so desperately in love with. There is an entire folder stuffed with journal writings, pictures and letters attached with that one. Hmmm…I wonder whatever became of him?