Hidden

 There was solace in those comic books. Piles of them. They came from my mother's youth and they were stowed away under the stairs. For years and years, my brothers and I would make the trip to the basement and open the creaky door to peer inside. Stored in old fruit crates were the memories of another generation. They became our own. 

Little Lulu. Donald Duck. Classics Illustrated. The collector in my mind reels at the way we treated those treasures. Of course back then they were not viewed as anything particularly special. What was impressive was the way they held together for all those years. More often than not, we would step inside that cramped space under the stairs with a flashlight, preferring to sit on one of the crates and rid by that dim beam than to take an issue or two out into the glare. Reading them beneath the stairs reinforced the intimate nature of our experience. 

As years passed, our own comics began to be filed away alongside our mother's. Donald Duck was joined by Captain America, and Archie, and a monthly addition of Mad Magazines. This continued until the path between the fruit crates had all but been eliminated by the avalanche of paper. 

Now the trips under the stairs became more excavations than simple stops for reading. Pawing through all those piles of adventure, danger and humor in hopes of discovering something that hadn't been read at least a dozen times held a certain amount of anticipation. There was no more sitting on the crates. That became impossible as the stacks overwhelmed the containers. They strained and groaned, and several of them simply snapped due to the volume of what they were expected to hold. It got so bad that eventually the creaky door was prone to popping open as the glacial drift of magazines pressed against it. 

At different points, each of us three boys took on the chore of taming the comic accumulation. Making stacks, and attempting to return the overwhelming drift of paper and staples, we each attempted to make order from chaos. Ultimately, it became clear that some of the most mangled issues would need to be removed in order to save those with covers and were not tattered beyond all recognition. 

It was during this process that we began to realize how much of my mother's youth was being sacrificed. And we felt a little ashamed. 

Now all those comics are gone. Hers. Ours. The legacy. They never became anyone's car down payment or trip to Europe. But they live on. In my memories. The dim light. The smell of aged paper. The inner sanctum.