musings from somewhere over the atlantic

iceland air FI657, somewhere over the atlantic

i don’t think there’s any way to emotionally prepare for this. clearing out our childhood home. the photos, the show clothes, the memories. the realizing that there’s not much there that i wish to have or keep. the clinging. the letting go. whether to reveal to mom what we’re doing. how she will react. whether she will understand. whether i have compassion and sympathy for her. so many questions, many more than answers. and a limbo space, where i don’t know what to feel. anticipation, dread, relief, nostalgia, resentment, disappointment, sadness? all of those at once?

she’s not going to get any better. she has checked out and she’s no longer the mother i knew. if i ever knew her. can we know our mothers? can we escape them? embrace them? become them? what if we become them? shit, what if we become them?

her utter lack of ever being wrong. her hiding of her actions. her lack of attention span. her distractions. what if i’m already her? how to escape?

i look at my hands and see hers. but also mine. we are always a combination of our parents and our experiences. but who does that mean that i am? i look at my handwriting and see dad’s.

dad was smart, sarcastic, a bit too mean at times, he drank a bit too much, loved his garden, was writer and cared deeply about his town. he was funny and competitive and political and i miss him.

mom is distracted, determined, funny, loves to sing, doesn’t listen very well, was never rattled if 8 extra people showed up to thanksgiving. but i suspect mom never reached her potential. was it laziness? or did she just not know what it might be? she loved horses and instilled that love in me. she got a motorcycle license at 60 and a permit to carry at 70+. i miss that brave woman.

they both loved reading. however, i don’t have a sense of what they got out of it. i love reading too, but i don’t recall them ever recommending i read a certain book. i just read what was around the house and anything else i was interested in….from stephen king to tolstoy.

i want a tattoo of dad’s signature on the inside of my wrist. and i want to get it on this trip. i have a sudden certainty of that. on my right hand. the hand with which i write.

secret 4 - that stuff in my parents' basement

over the years, every time i've moved, some of my junk stuff beloved belongings has ended up in my parents' basement (they have a very big basement). the last move, which was undertaken as a poor student and involved crossing one of the world's major oceans and only as much overweight luggage as the airline was willing to take without charging extra (turned out to be 7 checked bags between two people), meant that a whole lot of stuff was left behind in my parents' basement.

it includes items as diverse as my archived wedding dress from the marriage to the starter husband to a very smart, very early 90s black & white suit that i would undoubtedly piss myself laughing at if i saw it now to books and CDs and photos and papers from the rhetoric course i took during my first year in college to an ancient mac that can do a cyrillic font. i think there's a box of barbie dolls and some collector's music boxes from the franklin mint (it was a phase). my saddle is there (probably more than one). the silver halter diamond h pansy won for overall grand champion mare in 1982 and which we bought from my horsetrainer so many years ago. knickknacks collected at flea markets. dishes. pots and pans. some of those plastic things you can make your own popsicles in.

from moves before that one, there are odds and ends of very student-y garage sale furniture, boxes of college sweatshirts and shoes and garishly colored bill cosby-inspired sweaters and about 600 pounds of trophies that i won with various horses throughout my childhood.

every time we're there, dad asks when i'm going to take all that stuff. and here's where we come to the secret. i'm not. never. ever. aside from a few of the books (i can't seem to locate my marxist collection) and some pictures i've been looking for that must be there and a certain trophy with a gold horse on top and a blue body that was the very first one i won with my pony merrylegs when i was sent into the show ring wearing little black & red pants and barely old enough to walk on my own, i'm not going to be loading up a container with all that crap stuff.

i suppose someday sabin will happen upon those boxes of clothes and find them to be charmingly vintage and then they will make the trip. but until then, they languish in my parents' basement and i'm sure they feel quite at home.

sharon, i know you're reading, and you're welcome to share this secret with dad. tho' i suspect he already knows it.