Limbo time, although Himself explains
that they're over condemning babies to damnation and have therefore
eschewed limbo. My own limbo is of course figurative although if the
afterlife is not as I imagine it, who knows if there might not be a
little damnation in store? I tread water for the first of the empty
nest years. I experience a morass and nothing is as meaningful and
satisfying as the kids' presence. Returning to teaching certainly
has upped the purposefulness ante but this is just a beginning step
in making the pieces fall together for the rest of our lives.
A frustrating and expensive nine month
effort to evict a tenant who's gone off her meds actually raises our
consciousness as to the many merits of returning to our little
cottage ourselves, if we finally manage to evict the problem.
Because of it's resemblance to an illustration in Winnie the Pooh,
the kids took to calling it the Owl House. When we moved to Mount
Washington we'd said that when we were old and gray and the kids flew
the coop we'd return. It seemed a lifetime away at the time. Here
we are. And it seems too that my teaching hours will increase as I
transition away for my business. I think that these massive changes
will ultimately result in a simpler life of less stuff, less debt and
less work. Getting from here to there is so daunting though that
it's hard to even think about it.
I am pleased that so many old friends
share their memories of the little house on the walk. It's been 27
years since we moved away. I weep when I tell the kids that we're
abandoning the only home they'd ever known. Dismantling and selling
my own childhood home was heartbreaking. My earliest memory is a
naugahyde loveseat with a sort of atomic hourglass pattern. The
human interactions were fraught and sometimes vicious there, but to
me, the house was always beautiful and if I were able to draw, I
could, I'm sure, capture even the smallest details.
My kids acknowledge their wistfulness
about losing the place where they were infants, kids and then young
men. But to my surprise, instead of posing alternatives to giving up
their home, they are supportive. Both recount that many of their
friends' parents have downsized with salubrious results. Spuds is
going to try and return home for a couple of months to help pack us
up and gently compel his father to part with a garage full of books.
This would mean giving up a good job that he likes and I am staggered
at how easily he proffers this sacrifice. “I would love spending
the time with you guys,” he counters. I know that my parents loved
me and I loved them too. Still do. It is difficult though, I admit
with shame, to remember an instance where spending time with them was
more pleasure than obligation.
I clung to the house on Fulton Avenue
as it was perhaps a physical representation of a place conducive to a
happy family-hood that I longed for, but never really existed there.
We hung in. There was no nasty divorce. No stepparents or
Saturday only Dad. I did better. But this is because despite my (long forgiven, children of the depression) parents' shortcomings,
they did what they knew how to do. I went to college. I travelled.
My father left me a business. My mother helped me buy the little
house that now seems to be the lynchpin for a life of greater comfort
and ease.
Downsizing means parting with a lot of
things that have sentimental significance. I did this with my
mother's home and now take on my own. I love the home I've made and
cherish the memories of decades of friends and family and the parade
of pets. But my childhood home was a place marker for a family like
I saw on TV. I will indeed be sad to leave my present home. I've
never lived anywhere longer. But it is really just a house and not a
representation of the trappings of a happy family. I have the real
McCoy.
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