January, 1970

It is a new year – a new decade. A decade in which I will forge my earliest memories. The basic constructs of who I will become is going to be built in these years and the person I am today would be seeded in the 1970’s. For better or worse my value structures, the basis for my trust, an the groundwork for emotional being – all that was not genetically predisposed – would be the result of my experiences in the next few years of life. But before my developmental actualization is to take place the house needs to be packed up. The place is in chaos as a lifetime of living makes its way from the cupboards, off the walls and out of closets and into packing boxes. This house has been home for as long as anyone can remember and it does not bear the efforts of storage easily.

My mother, other that the occasional admonition of arguing siblings, is keeping quiet as she carefully removes dishes from the china cabinet, most decorative and rarely used, to wrap them in towels to better protect them. My father is down the hall, boxing records and packing up his little den with the fastidious care. The older siblings are each responsible for getting packing everything of theirs that is not essential and for my oldest sister Sharon this would mean the tedious removal of the hundreds of photographs with which she has wallpapered her room. Not everything in the house is to be packed up as the new house is smaller and many items are going to left behind and the old place becomes goes from being a home to a warehouse. The arguments are yet to happen as to what stays and what goes but if one thing is certain my father will not leave without his records and books.

In a few weeks the house would be locked up and the keys handed over to the neighbours who my parents have made arrangements to take care of the place. The idea of renting the house was not an option. The notion of strangers living in her house was out of the question to my mother and although my father saw this as a lost of potential revenue he was not about to push his luck debating his position already having convinced my mother to move.

I am 22 months old and still completely oblivious to what is happening. Instead I delight in, as is the wont of most young children, an empty box.

Number one hit from January, 1970
I Want you Back by The Jackson Five