I remember when I turned 18 my grandmother that lived with us, we called her Grammy, bought me a birthday present. She bought me a cheap set of suitcases. They were stylish for the day, but this was before suitcases had to have wheels and all that.
Three or four of them nested inside of each other and they were all mostly hard-sided, embedded but not as hard as we think of hard-sided luggage now. And then there was a soft-sided fake leather bag inside the last smallest suitcase.
It was a nice set of luggage, but I didn't understand. And she smiled and she said, "oh, this is for when you leave." I hadn't even thought about leaving the house. I hadn't planned on leaving at all because I was going to go to college.
And it just struck me as odd that somebody in my house would give me a gift to help me leave. Over the years, I've thought about it and I remember the story. that she would tell and that my mother would finally tell after we found out her secrets about how they left.
Usually in the middle of the night and usually to get away from something or someone. Grammy and granddaddy would leave because they had run out of money and they were two months behind in rent and they couldn't pay their bills.
But she told me that initially she left home because of her crazy brother or cousin something and other mean people in her family. Apparently her stepmother was extremely mean to her and the rest of her family was it mean to her even though they passed her around to give her a place to stay.
My mother left home to get away from her mother and stepfather. She married a guy right out of high school but I never knew that until I turned 17 and I saw something in her yearbook that triggered a couple of questions.
It was a really bad thing and she left him and went with my dad after meeting him in a bar in New Mexico. My dad was a bartender there but he stayed in a room close by or in the back of the bar that never was clear.
I don't buy people luggage as gifts unless they ask specifically for it. I don't want to give the impression that I think they should move on. Which was the distinct impression that I got. I didn't move out of the house that I grew up in until I was 20-ish and that was to move into the little one bedroom house that my grandparents had built for my aunt and then uncle.
My dad negotiated something with grandpa so that I could stay in that little house while I went to college. Now I own that little house and it's amazing.
But I don't buy people luggage. I don't want them to go.
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