Putting a FOR SALE sign in your front yard is like leaving your diary open on the kitchen table. It opens a reality into your world were you welcome strangers into your home and invite them to closely inspect, evaluate and comment on your personal spaces. You do this in the hope that they will find your sanctuary compelling and enticing enough to want to have it for their own.
Your choices in design, color, style and decorating as well as your cleaning and landscaping abilities are openly and enthusiastically considered by random people roving through your home. Cabinets, closets and drawers filled with your possessions become fodder for the assessment mill, as do oddly, the contents of your medicine cabinet. Words of advice here, to individuals who wear strong perfumes and colognes, don’t touch things you would prefer others didn’t know you touched. Just saying……..
When preparing for a “showing” you usually lug out the big bag of mixed emotions. Excitement, concern, hope, doubt and curiosity churn in your brain as you try to remember if you put your shoes away or left your computer out. Your home is suddenly being seen through new eyes and the ceramic snail with the adorable blue flowers suddenly becomes too whimsical, the flooring in the bathroom you never really liked becomes hideous and you suddenly realize you should have mowed the grass yesterday.
An open laundry basket gives you pause to reflect on exposed underwear and you wonder if cooking broccoli and fish for dinner is really such a great idea. Much like preparing for a visit from your Grandmother you notice dust where you have never notice dust before.
You hope they will love your home not only because you want to sell it but also because it is a manifestation of you and secretly you want their appreciation and approval. The comments left by these unknown people are usually pretty benign, “The kitchen is too dark” or “I wanted a finished basement” and while your brain is telling you, “it’s constructive criticism” your heart is hearing, “your baby’s ugly and your Mama dresses you funny”.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Little Leather Purse
As a rule, I avoid basements; they all seem dark, dank, cluttered and unfriendly. Truth be told I avoid the stairs leading down to basements whenever possible as well. Knowing this, my husband, Jay, kindly took on the intimidating task of excavating our basement in preparation for our move. As he sorted and packed he would set aside the things he wanted me to go through, not sure if they were things I wanted to keep or not.
I discovered one such article perched on a box, quietly awaiting its fate. Next to some Christmas decorations sat an old leather purse. Not much larger then a cigar box it was the color of butterscotch left on the burner a bit too long. The purse had smooth rectangle sides that angled in to meet at the top, creating a long-sided triangle shape for the purse. Demure black stitching lined the border of the small zippered pocket on the side and a tiny gold rooster logo was attached near the top. Two short stitched leather straps served as handles and the leather was marred from wear and scratches.
I could imagine what Jay saw as he looked at the purse; it was just an old purse I didn’t use anymore. What I saw when I looked at that purse was a long hair young girl of twenty, shopping at Ayres. The girl had recently been told by her husband of six months that he was in love with someone else and their marriage was over. She was engaged in the apparently age old custom of buying expensive things that her soon to be ex-husband will get the bills for at some later date. As she strode through the store hell bent on running up that charge card her eyes fell on the small leather purse. The price of the purse was Twenty-five Dollars. An absurd amount of money for a purse at the time and far more then she had ever spent on such a thing. She had never even owned a leather purse before. By the time she had it in her hands and felt its smooth soft leather and saw the tiny gold rooster on its side, she had made up her mind. She bought that little leather purse.
I’m sure you have guessed the young girl was me, many, many years, many, many lifetimes ago. It turned out that the, someone else, was in fact my slightly older sister who I had always been very close to……. but that is a story for another day. That old purse bought so long ago will be an antique soon. It amazed me that seeing it setting there among the other flotsam that it could have the power to conjure up the memory of that day so vividly to my mind.
While I searched through the purse looking for that hundred dollar bill we all think we have tucked away and forgotten in our old purses, I found something else. I found a very old TWA (for you young ones, Trans World Airlines) boarding pass. It was a date in October of 1976, the first time I had ever flown in an airplane. I was pregnant with my daughter Christina and was flying from Indianapolis to Denver Colorado so I could drive back home with my husband that had been there in school for three months. I remember, I was wearing my favorite maternity top. It was a striped sweater in shades of green with a black turtleneck. I remember, the man I was seated next to was very kind to the nervous first time flier and helped me find my way in the Denver airport. I remember my husband’s face as we spotted each other in the airport corridor.
The people that know about these things say that the objects are not the memories and they are correct they are not. They are however the things that signal our brain to bring that memory front and center A.S.A.P. The need to keep the stuff that prompts those memories must be inherent in all of us to some degree. We treasure the mementos of the watershed moments in our lives, the births, the deaths, the graduations. We store them in boxes that fill up our attics, closets and basements. Is this our brains way of organizing our memories, are they downloaded to these items for later retrieval like an external hard drive or offsite storage facility? It almost makes me understand the strong compulsion to hoard, almost.
We continue to pack, sort, dispose of and re-evaluate our possessions and thankfully the basement is empty. The closets upstairs, yes, more stairs, await and I am sure along with the old clothes and extra blankets I will find some more powerful “stuff”.
And of course, that little leather purse and its contents will be heading west.
I discovered one such article perched on a box, quietly awaiting its fate. Next to some Christmas decorations sat an old leather purse. Not much larger then a cigar box it was the color of butterscotch left on the burner a bit too long. The purse had smooth rectangle sides that angled in to meet at the top, creating a long-sided triangle shape for the purse. Demure black stitching lined the border of the small zippered pocket on the side and a tiny gold rooster logo was attached near the top. Two short stitched leather straps served as handles and the leather was marred from wear and scratches.
I could imagine what Jay saw as he looked at the purse; it was just an old purse I didn’t use anymore. What I saw when I looked at that purse was a long hair young girl of twenty, shopping at Ayres. The girl had recently been told by her husband of six months that he was in love with someone else and their marriage was over. She was engaged in the apparently age old custom of buying expensive things that her soon to be ex-husband will get the bills for at some later date. As she strode through the store hell bent on running up that charge card her eyes fell on the small leather purse. The price of the purse was Twenty-five Dollars. An absurd amount of money for a purse at the time and far more then she had ever spent on such a thing. She had never even owned a leather purse before. By the time she had it in her hands and felt its smooth soft leather and saw the tiny gold rooster on its side, she had made up her mind. She bought that little leather purse.
I’m sure you have guessed the young girl was me, many, many years, many, many lifetimes ago. It turned out that the, someone else, was in fact my slightly older sister who I had always been very close to……. but that is a story for another day. That old purse bought so long ago will be an antique soon. It amazed me that seeing it setting there among the other flotsam that it could have the power to conjure up the memory of that day so vividly to my mind.
While I searched through the purse looking for that hundred dollar bill we all think we have tucked away and forgotten in our old purses, I found something else. I found a very old TWA (for you young ones, Trans World Airlines) boarding pass. It was a date in October of 1976, the first time I had ever flown in an airplane. I was pregnant with my daughter Christina and was flying from Indianapolis to Denver Colorado so I could drive back home with my husband that had been there in school for three months. I remember, I was wearing my favorite maternity top. It was a striped sweater in shades of green with a black turtleneck. I remember, the man I was seated next to was very kind to the nervous first time flier and helped me find my way in the Denver airport. I remember my husband’s face as we spotted each other in the airport corridor.
The people that know about these things say that the objects are not the memories and they are correct they are not. They are however the things that signal our brain to bring that memory front and center A.S.A.P. The need to keep the stuff that prompts those memories must be inherent in all of us to some degree. We treasure the mementos of the watershed moments in our lives, the births, the deaths, the graduations. We store them in boxes that fill up our attics, closets and basements. Is this our brains way of organizing our memories, are they downloaded to these items for later retrieval like an external hard drive or offsite storage facility? It almost makes me understand the strong compulsion to hoard, almost.
We continue to pack, sort, dispose of and re-evaluate our possessions and thankfully the basement is empty. The closets upstairs, yes, more stairs, await and I am sure along with the old clothes and extra blankets I will find some more powerful “stuff”.
And of course, that little leather purse and its contents will be heading west.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Like many families in the 80s, our family was faced with some grim financial choices in a very turbulent economy. There was a deep recession, Interest rates were sky high and if you had a job you had best keep it.
Rumors whiz around like ping pong balls were my husband worked. As part of the AT&T divestiture his company would be included in the divisions being split off from the main company and no one really had any idea of what would happen. There was talk of transfers to California, Arizona and Chicago. There was talk of shutting down their operation all together.
There was also an opening for an instructor at a Bell Systems training center in Dublin Ohio. It was a move from a blue to a white collar job in a stable part of the company and they had offered the job to him and even said they would pay for the move. We talked and debated and pretended we had options but knew moving to Ohio was the best of the disheartening alternatives open to us. So, we moved.
Moving away from your “home” from your family and loved ones can be daunting. It is being uprooted, like transplanted flowers. At first we wilted, unable to accept the oddness, to understand the differences in this new landscape. We missed our families, felt alienated and alone. Time passed and we did learn to understand, even appreciate our new environment. During our time in Ohio we have had a range of life altering events, countless joys and many sorrows. The tender shoots planted here so long ago have grown, flourished and died back as life has dictated. Our once fragile roots have grown strong and are now deeply buried here. Yet a part of us longs to return back to our origin, back to our family.
For us the time has come for us to go home, to be with our family again. Like the first move, the choice to move wasn’t made lightly or without pain but also like the first, inevitable. We are joyful about what we are moving to but also saddened by what we leave behind. It is my hope that we are running towards something, not running away. That we are moving forward by moving back.
We now sit at the pinnacle, at the top of this high mountain. We can see where we have been as well as where we are going. The trip here has been long and arduous and the remainder of the trip will have its own difficulty. My throat tightens as I look down the mountain and see the obstacles lying in our path. I know we must meet and overcome each one in its turn and again this is daunting.
Memories surface, tugging me back to the past while optimism for the future fights for a stronger foothold in my heart and I know this is the right thing for us. Not the easiest thing but it is the right thing.
Rumors whiz around like ping pong balls were my husband worked. As part of the AT&T divestiture his company would be included in the divisions being split off from the main company and no one really had any idea of what would happen. There was talk of transfers to California, Arizona and Chicago. There was talk of shutting down their operation all together.
There was also an opening for an instructor at a Bell Systems training center in Dublin Ohio. It was a move from a blue to a white collar job in a stable part of the company and they had offered the job to him and even said they would pay for the move. We talked and debated and pretended we had options but knew moving to Ohio was the best of the disheartening alternatives open to us. So, we moved.
Moving away from your “home” from your family and loved ones can be daunting. It is being uprooted, like transplanted flowers. At first we wilted, unable to accept the oddness, to understand the differences in this new landscape. We missed our families, felt alienated and alone. Time passed and we did learn to understand, even appreciate our new environment. During our time in Ohio we have had a range of life altering events, countless joys and many sorrows. The tender shoots planted here so long ago have grown, flourished and died back as life has dictated. Our once fragile roots have grown strong and are now deeply buried here. Yet a part of us longs to return back to our origin, back to our family.
For us the time has come for us to go home, to be with our family again. Like the first move, the choice to move wasn’t made lightly or without pain but also like the first, inevitable. We are joyful about what we are moving to but also saddened by what we leave behind. It is my hope that we are running towards something, not running away. That we are moving forward by moving back.
We now sit at the pinnacle, at the top of this high mountain. We can see where we have been as well as where we are going. The trip here has been long and arduous and the remainder of the trip will have its own difficulty. My throat tightens as I look down the mountain and see the obstacles lying in our path. I know we must meet and overcome each one in its turn and again this is daunting.
Memories surface, tugging me back to the past while optimism for the future fights for a stronger foothold in my heart and I know this is the right thing for us. Not the easiest thing but it is the right thing.
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