FoxFire Project

The Foxfire Project, begun by Eliot Wigginton and his students in the 1960s, was designed to save from oblivion the local color of a particular Southern region: the dialect, customs, recipes, antiques, manners, clothes, games and rituals of a particular area.

As a class, the students enrolled in Ms. Rojo's AP English Language and Composition class have compiled their own stories for their own version of a “Foxfire E-Magazine” renamed "Leafing".

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Boxes of Memories


            In the corner of the room, just below the window, stood the last and final box with the faded black sharpie letters that read “ETERNITY” on the top of the box.  In the box was the last of items that once filled up this entire room. Just like in the past we were moving again.

            The first time we moved was out of my grandmas three bedroom house, which became too small for our blossoming family.  I don’t remember much of that move, due to the fact that I was two years old when it happened. Although I don’t remember much, my grandma says that with the years following my birth, I had grown an attachment to her. So when we moved out, my grandma felt a sort of emptiness in the house without my presence.

            From my grandma’s house we moved into an apartment right above my Tia’s in Socorro. We continued to live there until I was five. In the years that I lived here, I would wake up every morning and go to my Tia’s for breakfast then head downstairs to play with my cousins. They would put me in the front of their bikes, and ride me around the block. This is where I spent most of my days, exploring the outdoors and my surroundings with my cousins at my side. After the discovery of a ten year old developing beehive in the inside of our roof, we decided it was time to go. We packed our things and left behind my family and the outdoors I had come to know and love, to just take our item filled boxes with the memories that I held from our temporary home.

            We moved into a two story apartment in the west side of El Paso. The rest of my childhood was held in this raspberry scented apartment. Most of my childhood I spent downstairs in the white carpeted opened space of my living room. Here I played with my friend Bianca, who lived across the street, and Victoria, a girl my mom used to babysit.

            My imagination ran wild in this house; I grew so much in this house compared to the other “temporary” homes. So when I was told that we were moving because of a small family member that would soon be joining us, I cried.

            So there I stood, looking at the box of the corner of the room, just beneath the window with the faded black sharpie letters that read “ETERNITYS”. I realized just then that once again all the memories I had from that house would be contained in that tiny box as I, once again, left friends and bits of pieces behind and just took with me my memories.

1 comment:

  1. I love you story I didn't move as much as you did but i did move from San Antonio to El Paso.

    ReplyDelete