our house was sold last week. (the news received minor attention on my part as it was announced right after i found out about my father's heart-attack. he just reported happily to me yesterday that he spent the day outside and fishing, though, so i'm all freed up to spend freaked out energy elsewhere.)
oh, i know. everybody has to deal with houses being sold and "losing connections with my past!!" and all that crappy jazz, but in true egomaniacal manner i find myself waving my fist at the sky and yelling "this is more special you see pity meeee!!" and you'll just have to deal.
the house in question (no pic, conveniently) has been in our family for about a century. i realise that has as little impact on outsiders as "30 years" would have, so let me illustrate:
my grandmother lived 81 years in that house. she was adopted into it as an infant, grew into a woman, met a man, was married, bore four children and raised them, saw her husband die, saw her children move out and in 1989 had her daugher and children move into that very house. ten years later it took a near-death accident to bring her out.
and with that comes the vacating of the properties. how do you vacate over 80 years worth of pack-ratting? what do you do with the plastic bags hanging in the basement with old shoes, magazines and christmas decorations? where do all the "needs a few nails and some paint" furniture go? the scraps of carpet and wallpaper kept in case of reparations? the big painting of a swedish opera singer from 1910 in the livingroom?
as i call home i'm constanly presented with the same question: "what do you want to keep??" huh? it's like asking me what pebbels out in the yard i want to keep. of course i blanked out. luckily, my mother read what my mind did not think.
"i put away grandma's sowing machine, and her sowing shrine with threads and all." and i'm not sure what to say. that old, ornate singer machine is a relic to me, Grandma's Sowing Machine with a permanent unsaid DO NOT TOUCH attatched to it. mine? never. but i am grateful and puzzled - without the kitchen table and the ancient electricity outlets, will it actually know how to work? the mind boggles.
(get ready for a vomit-inducing sentence:)
and in the midst of losing all that seem to stitch our family together i am reminded of the constant that will never be sold off at a yard sale or thrown into the garbage can - the cells, the names, the stories (albeit perhaps not the 40 year old plastic christmas tree).
it just hit me when i was looking through pictures of us online. (sparked by a fabulous em entry because i have no original and interesting topics myself) we are clones! it's scary! the squinty eyes, the same smile, the apple-cheeks.. eek! in direct line below, witness the world's first cloned family - grandma, mom, brother and me. baaaaa!
GAAAAAAAAAAAWD. i think i just reached a new level of hairballness. i give up. sober.