So, the moving job is done. The cottage is emptied and so with the shifting of that box comes the end of that life that was lived over there. And while they weren't overt, the house was still loaded with clues, my dear, clues of another life lived, if only someone bothered to look hard at finding a secretive life buried away in the remains.
It was something else, though, that moving job. All too much stuff. It wasn't quite what I had expected to do with those things, you know? I shopped and hoarded and saved things back there because, as the months went by I firmly believed that somehow you would jump ship over there and come away with me. I was "setting up house". Silly me. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be melding those things from the little house with all the stuff left behind in the big house. Artwork, sure. Books and music, certainly. But all of it? All those little things it takes to run a house? Furniture, crockery, glassware, mirrors, clocks and pots and pans? I know that I am man who likes to accumulate things but enough is enough. A garage sale can't come too soon in my life.
But aside from spatulas and bath towels and beer glasses I still managed to find small reminders of you tucked away here and there. Not in a big way, mind you, as I managed to clear out most things related to you ages ago. Filled that satchel upstairs next to my bed to the brim. But still, a good detective would have found stuff if he knew what to look for, and so I did:
One copper foiled framed print. This one I passed along to you in the fall and you gave back to me on All Soul's Day in '06. It was that print of the boy, the one looking down at the frog. The Young Biologist, something like that. It was that frog that did it. Just like the one on the sink, the one that rides on my car dash. Figured you would appreciate it. You have one, too. Had a whole bag of them. Yes, and you're welcome.
One poppy pod, sans poppy seeds. I saved seeds for both of us from the harvest of poppy pods that came from that pack of seeds you floated me there that spring. Punkin and I planted those along with a raftful of wildflower seeds. Of course they didn't come back as strong or as beautiful as that first round of flowers did, but they were there as a reminder that life is that way. You need to catch and enjoy that first bloom. That's where the dreams reside.
One bird watcher's poster. That one came with a feeder and bird bath on birthday, along with many other gifts that night. The bird bath is still strapped to the trellis but the squirrels destroyed the feeder the first day I hung it up. But I used that poster almost every day to see what it was that I was seeing on the patio and at another feeder I bought later on that January. Between that poster and the Stokes guide I was getting pretty good at knowing who was coming around to eat. I have to admit that there wasn't any mention on that poster about squirrels or rats, though, but there you go!
One letter written to you, stuck away in a book From This Day Forward. I wrote it yet never gave it to you. Penned it right after I saw you at the library on your birthday. Put you on the spot that day. Found you and your girls out by the new books, over by the circ desk. Sang Happy Birthday to you right there on the library floor. I can still feel the heat in your cheeks. You were doing your best to shake our memory and that letter pointed out to me how desparate I was to hold onto it. It almost hurt to read those words. Sort of like it does to mention this right now.
Then there was road script from those Boise rides. My copy of The Lord of the Rings that I read after my outpatient surgery. A map of Dungeness Spit State Park. Yahtzee instructions. A Leavenworth postcard. A copy of the March issue of Sunset, still open to the page with the Sandtorte recipe on it. Red bandanas, worn by N and I during our evening trip to see the second Pirates of the Carribean episode, the same one that you and your girls went to see, somewhere there on same lot there at the Rodeo drive-in. A black espresso maker. A Colorado souvenier plate. A bagful of plastic oy horses I meant to scatter on your lawn in the dead of night. Lot's of little things.
But it is the little things that add up. The bits and pieces and flotsam of life, things that in and unto themselves support no life at all but once touched suddenly have a life of their own. They become magic totems, touchstones, reminders that somewhere, somehow we lived. I suppose that's why I stay here in this little town, hold onto this little house of mine. It's not only my place of refuge, a home I share with my kids when they come to visit, but also a place that is, well, not so much a "museum", not a masoleum, either, but a place of rest for those memories that we expended there. They rest, waiting. Waiting for someone to pick them up and remember again.
The cottage where I took refuge that year when the storms in my life were raging is now shut down and awaiting a new tenant. Now I'm back home again, in a place where I don't had to have hide away anything anymore. Everything is out in the open. I suppose you still have to know what to look for. Most people will never see what I see, but you might. Bird books, strange rocks from the beach, homemade cassette tapes, Italian coffee pots, cherished photographs, all of it is out now. Now... now I can let it all be. No more hiding life away in little houses anymore.
Love, your WHMB
It was something else, though, that moving job. All too much stuff. It wasn't quite what I had expected to do with those things, you know? I shopped and hoarded and saved things back there because, as the months went by I firmly believed that somehow you would jump ship over there and come away with me. I was "setting up house". Silly me. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be melding those things from the little house with all the stuff left behind in the big house. Artwork, sure. Books and music, certainly. But all of it? All those little things it takes to run a house? Furniture, crockery, glassware, mirrors, clocks and pots and pans? I know that I am man who likes to accumulate things but enough is enough. A garage sale can't come too soon in my life.
But aside from spatulas and bath towels and beer glasses I still managed to find small reminders of you tucked away here and there. Not in a big way, mind you, as I managed to clear out most things related to you ages ago. Filled that satchel upstairs next to my bed to the brim. But still, a good detective would have found stuff if he knew what to look for, and so I did:
One copper foiled framed print. This one I passed along to you in the fall and you gave back to me on All Soul's Day in '06. It was that print of the boy, the one looking down at the frog. The Young Biologist, something like that. It was that frog that did it. Just like the one on the sink, the one that rides on my car dash. Figured you would appreciate it. You have one, too. Had a whole bag of them. Yes, and you're welcome.
One poppy pod, sans poppy seeds. I saved seeds for both of us from the harvest of poppy pods that came from that pack of seeds you floated me there that spring. Punkin and I planted those along with a raftful of wildflower seeds. Of course they didn't come back as strong or as beautiful as that first round of flowers did, but they were there as a reminder that life is that way. You need to catch and enjoy that first bloom. That's where the dreams reside.
One bird watcher's poster. That one came with a feeder and bird bath on birthday, along with many other gifts that night. The bird bath is still strapped to the trellis but the squirrels destroyed the feeder the first day I hung it up. But I used that poster almost every day to see what it was that I was seeing on the patio and at another feeder I bought later on that January. Between that poster and the Stokes guide I was getting pretty good at knowing who was coming around to eat. I have to admit that there wasn't any mention on that poster about squirrels or rats, though, but there you go!
One letter written to you, stuck away in a book From This Day Forward. I wrote it yet never gave it to you. Penned it right after I saw you at the library on your birthday. Put you on the spot that day. Found you and your girls out by the new books, over by the circ desk. Sang Happy Birthday to you right there on the library floor. I can still feel the heat in your cheeks. You were doing your best to shake our memory and that letter pointed out to me how desparate I was to hold onto it. It almost hurt to read those words. Sort of like it does to mention this right now.
Then there was road script from those Boise rides. My copy of The Lord of the Rings that I read after my outpatient surgery. A map of Dungeness Spit State Park. Yahtzee instructions. A Leavenworth postcard. A copy of the March issue of Sunset, still open to the page with the Sandtorte recipe on it. Red bandanas, worn by N and I during our evening trip to see the second Pirates of the Carribean episode, the same one that you and your girls went to see, somewhere there on same lot there at the Rodeo drive-in. A black espresso maker. A Colorado souvenier plate. A bagful of plastic oy horses I meant to scatter on your lawn in the dead of night. Lot's of little things.
But it is the little things that add up. The bits and pieces and flotsam of life, things that in and unto themselves support no life at all but once touched suddenly have a life of their own. They become magic totems, touchstones, reminders that somewhere, somehow we lived. I suppose that's why I stay here in this little town, hold onto this little house of mine. It's not only my place of refuge, a home I share with my kids when they come to visit, but also a place that is, well, not so much a "museum", not a masoleum, either, but a place of rest for those memories that we expended there. They rest, waiting. Waiting for someone to pick them up and remember again.
The cottage where I took refuge that year when the storms in my life were raging is now shut down and awaiting a new tenant. Now I'm back home again, in a place where I don't had to have hide away anything anymore. Everything is out in the open. I suppose you still have to know what to look for. Most people will never see what I see, but you might. Bird books, strange rocks from the beach, homemade cassette tapes, Italian coffee pots, cherished photographs, all of it is out now. Now... now I can let it all be. No more hiding life away in little houses anymore.
Love, your WHMB
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