Buried under boxes, in the corner of our storage garage, I found my actual “trunk.”
A blue metal one that I took to my first sleep-away camp when I was eight years old,
then to every subsequent summer camp, college dorm, apartment, and finally to LA
where I shared Loretta Young’s old mansion with 4 other songwriters.
We called the house “Big White”.
In the trunk I found programs from Broadway shows and local concerts my family saw when I was a preteen, compositions that I wrote in high school and college, journals, date books, and letters, stacks of them, from my parents, my sisters, my high school sweetheart, and precious friends, some of whom are gone now. All of it smelled damp and slightly moldy – it’s airing now in the sun. Most of all, what I found in the trunk is love. More love than I was ever able to acknowledge or receive. Somehow I had built invisible defensive walls. As I go through the letters now slowly, I can feel some of those walls melt, dissolve. Which brings me to tears – and also, inevitably, to this “Trunk” song, written with Karen Gottlieb when we lived in Big White. Karen’s words feel perfect for this moment.
“Somethings move in their own time – you’ve been moving in mine.”
