News Year’s eve.  Everyone reflects.  Some do it a little, I do it a lot.

Cold enough to snow, just enough to whiten the ground: Nature’s proof that winter is present.  How could I doubt?  A few days of temperate weather in mid December is enough rhetoric in my mind, raising suspicion that climate disaster could mean a respite from bitter cold and blowing snow for the next three months.  I know that would be a calamity in itself.  Everything that grows requires the severe cold, the winter sleep — and come spring, consequences would follow for the growing season, without a season of winter rest.

Reflecting on my past, my growing up years in North Carolina, I wonder if anything is truly left behind.  I carry within me, memories of hours and days spent playing in the pine woods, following the creek for miles, as it widened; not simply the memories either.  The echo of what I saw, sounds that I heard, bird song, the feel of a hatchet handle in my hand on a hot summer’s day chopping down pine tree saplings….  And the smell of pine resin.  All serves to constitute the adult that I have become.

I sorted through office supplies a few days ago and came upon a small piece of coal, that I saved as a keepsake in the late 90s.  Black anthracite, the result of resin compressed for god knows-how-long deep in the earth.  Loads of

coal were used to heat Braggtown School where I received an elementary education.  The school burned in 1991.  I arrived there too late for a final visit the old building.  I picked up the piece of coal from where the building had stood.

So many of my early memories were linked to that old building.  I remember how the wooden floors creaked, the high walled halls and rooms, painted an unappetizing green.  I remember the Principal, Mr. Goodwin.  His wife was my fifth grade teacher.

I remember an uncomfortable visit to his home on a Sunday afternoon.  The Goodwin’s home was adjacent to the school property. My dad discovered a quantity of library books scattered under my bed.  I was a voracious reader, and managed to remove the books from the school library with no checkout.  When a book was finished, I simply tossed it under the bed.  My crime discovered, dad picked up the phone and arranged an emergency meeting with the Principal.  With the box of contraband books in hand, I stood facing the Principal in his living room.  I stood there, my back to the wall waiting to be shot.  I remember his smile, the chuckle that I had read so much in a short few weeks.  Mr. Goodwin was more forgiving than was my dad, over my failure to follow the rules.

That experience has not been left behind.  Both the severity of my father, and the kindness of the Braggtown school Principal comprise the layers of psyche that form my personality.

Is anything ever left behind?