Maudlin

It's been a while since I wrote.

I'm still a bit disconnected with all that's been going on here at home.

Spent the weekend away so that the last few rooms could get sanded, stained and coated with finish. It's an odd, not-so-nice thing to give up your house, even for a long weekend-maybe I'm especially sensitive about this in light of the idea that we may have to relocate because of Cara's job.

Moving. My parents have never moved-they have been in the same house since 1948. there's a plaque in their house-my father made it to commemorate the date that they moved in. If they can help it, they will die in that house-their house. Who lived there before they did? It doesn't matter.

I had a daydream today about finding construction photographs of the house being built-the house was built in 1910-I know that because the date is incised into the cement foundation. The faces of the workers in the photographs saddened me. They worked with newly cut beams, shiny nails, the latest style of wallpaper, the fixtures gleaming brightly. Pocket doors, lath and plaster, knob and tube. All new in this photograph, but now either decrepit or dead.

Does this house of my childhood really exist or is it my memory that gives it substance?

These walls are dull with years hours minutes that slowly accumulated dust, the faces of those now dead, the worry, sleep and happiness of we who lived there...they mutely witnessed me reading my first book, breaking my toys, weeping. Now mostly memory.

My parents continue their lives here, in this place that is probably more charged for me than it is for them-they continue on, but I rely on the past. Every time I speak to my mom on the phone, I see the old kitchen, the stairs in my mind and even hear the sound of the light switch, pulled once again to keep away the darkness. My mom used to come home from her night-shift and enjoy a bit of Johnny Carson and a cup of coffee, borrowing just a little more time before ending her day.

I still can hear her turn on that light.

I have less bittersweet memories of this house-I guess because I'm still living here very much in the present. Maybe upon leaving, I'll discover the pain of separation, when the present crosses over to become the past. I have a bit of that now, in looking back on my old dogs and remembering them a bit younger-wasn't it only yesterday?