Taking Stock - Still A Mitchell

It's only fitting that I recovered this book while clearing and cleaning out the house on Panorama Way a few weeks ago, on Monday, January 3rd, considering that two days later would have marked his 88th Birthday.

I forgot I even had this book. I forgot about many things I had left at Panorama. Over the past 8+ years, every once in a while, something would trigger the recollection of having once had an item and no longer knowing where it went. Like my childhood baseball mitt, which I also found there recently. That mitt, I remembered having had and lost, but this book, a “Roget's Thesaurus”, upon which my father scribed his first initial and his full last name, went entirely forgotten. I could have and likely would have not thought about or seen it again were it not for the circumstances that led to my focus on cleaning the house out.

If I did ever see that book again it would have been many years later and still subject to the fate of having been packed into one of literally 40+ boxes and bins. Easily over one-hundred books including this were removed from her inherited antique french bookcase during the recent floor replacements going on just before and then during her hospitalization. Had she not fallen ill, all of those books along with Roget’s may have remained sealed in those same boxes until the house eventually sold. I would venture to guess that they would have been moved to storage and perhaps discovered long after my death by our kids in the hopefully distant future.

But that’s not what happened. Her tumor happened, as did my pressing for the completion of the flooring work, coordinating and accepting the return of a wall of boxes and the bookcase, and our going through and giving away all of those books, with a few exceptions. Irregularities. Departures. Inconsistencies. Special cases.

Of course, finding this book and seeing his name written on the edge trigged recollections and reflections right before his birthday. I've lived long enough now not to expect he'd have lived long enough to see that day. 88 years is a long time. Statistically, it appears 60-80 is about the average range for a male born in 1943, the low end of which he came short of by 6 full years.

How does my father’s relationship with me compare to that between myself and my kids? I think of that often. What aspects of his character and parenting methods have I adopted and carried forward? What did I never want to do, and perhaps still did, or did not? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the echoes of him come unconsciously streaming out of me in both positive and cringe-worthy ways. What did I learn from and want to avoid? How will my kids reflect back on and think of me decades after my own death? What will they miss, forgive, forget, or regret?

I have a banker’s box in my garage. I took it early last year from my mom’s house. It’s filled with hundreds of records and documents my mom retained related to him, to their counseling, their divorce, communications. When I took them from her, we talked about them, her recollections and her opinions which I have always had to balance with my own perspectives. I skimmed through them briefly but I have yet to sit down and focus on reviewing them. I think it would be fascinating to get more “first-hand” information that might shed more light on their very contentious marriage. Yet being stuck in the garage has validated the age-old adage of “out of sight, out of mind.”

My and Linda's laptops are both loaded with correspondences, private notes and journal entries, negative and positive, that will reflect the varied sides of our own marriage and divorce story. That itself is a similar set of archives to those I possess. And someday, my kids will likely have an opportunity to sift through them as well, and likely gain more insight into she and I, and her, and I.

I am still learning about my parents, and theirs, and our family history, even at 60. As mentioned in another post, my last name should, theoretically, be “Stockstill”. That’s our real family name. Yet as regal sounding as that name sounds, I’m content to be a “Mitchell”, as was my father and his father before him. It’s all I’ve ever known and it’s working just fine.

As I’ve aged and experienced more, every backstory of drama and intrigue begins to feel more sensational than sensical. History is subjective and perspectives are skewed with bias. What my mother and my father’s first wife have taught me is that two people can have vastly different memories and opinions. The same would hold true today, for me, when talking to Jennifer, Linda, or any number of people whose path I’ve either carved, groomed, sullied or cut short.

I expect that when my kids have the opportunity to look back, review and reflect on everything they’ll have access to, from photos to writings to even this post, their memories of our time together will be positive ones. Albeit likely peppered with things I did that they’ll consciously avoid repeating, or repeat without realizing it, until a decade or so later when they come across an artifact that’ll serve as a reminder on the 30th of June, 2049.