What Is Home?
As the date when my house goes on the market draws closer, and I cross another item off of my to-do list, I take another step in the process of detaching from my home. Whenever I move a piece of furniture, it stirs up a cloud of memories, along with the dust kitties.
After the pause of my dinner party last week, the process is back in motion. This morning, the Salvation Army came and took away some furniture (which had belonged to my grandmother) and a whole lot of junk. This evening, my niece's boyfriend A came by to help me move furniture down to the garage, which now had space. We moved my grandfather's rolltop desk, an oak behemoth befitting the giant that he was. When I was a kid, the desk was in the study above the detached garage, where the giant cribbage board (which I also have) and all kinds of other things were kept. This room was his sanctuary, and what he did there, I had no idea. Now, except for the desk at which I sit writing this missive, the second bedroom, the "office" and guest room stands empty, echoing just from my keystrokes. In here, on New Year's Eve 1998, my ex and I spent the evening cheerfully stripping the blue and white striped wallpaper the previous owners had installed. We tried to toast the new year with wine we'd found in the garage, some godawful plonk that had been moldering away for decades, next to the dryer. I recently painted over the sunny yellow we'd painted in early '99, and the room is now just an empty shell, holding a few memories, shadows of the years I've lived here.
Detaching from the house was hardest at first. When I first tried to wrap my head around the thought of moving, I would choke up, and my eyes fill with tears. I had put so much of myself into the house, stripping paint off the fireplace tiles, making over the kitchen to get by at first, then designing a new kitchen -- my kitchen, my sanctuary, perfect down to the last quarter-inch, perfect for me. One of the biggest blows was painting out one wall of the dining room that I'd painted barn red to serve as visual punctuation in an otherwise long set of rooms. Aside from the kitchen, it was the biggest personal stamp I'd put on the house, and watching it go from red to primer white felt like I was being drained of blood myself. Now it matches the other butter-colored walls in the room, and the whole room feels denuded of character and substance.
After a month of packing, sorting, and tossing, the process is much easier. I've been stripping my home of its personality, of what's made it mine, so that now I am restless find a buyer and move on. Years after we had moved out of the house I had grown up in, even into my thirties, when I dreamed of "home," the house I saw in my dreams was that one. I wonder now how long I will dream of this house, how quickly the memories built here will fade, and even what and where my next home will be. What i
After the pause of my dinner party last week, the process is back in motion. This morning, the Salvation Army came and took away some furniture (which had belonged to my grandmother) and a whole lot of junk. This evening, my niece's boyfriend A came by to help me move furniture down to the garage, which now had space. We moved my grandfather's rolltop desk, an oak behemoth befitting the giant that he was. When I was a kid, the desk was in the study above the detached garage, where the giant cribbage board (which I also have) and all kinds of other things were kept. This room was his sanctuary, and what he did there, I had no idea. Now, except for the desk at which I sit writing this missive, the second bedroom, the "office" and guest room stands empty, echoing just from my keystrokes. In here, on New Year's Eve 1998, my ex and I spent the evening cheerfully stripping the blue and white striped wallpaper the previous owners had installed. We tried to toast the new year with wine we'd found in the garage, some godawful plonk that had been moldering away for decades, next to the dryer. I recently painted over the sunny yellow we'd painted in early '99, and the room is now just an empty shell, holding a few memories, shadows of the years I've lived here.
Detaching from the house was hardest at first. When I first tried to wrap my head around the thought of moving, I would choke up, and my eyes fill with tears. I had put so much of myself into the house, stripping paint off the fireplace tiles, making over the kitchen to get by at first, then designing a new kitchen -- my kitchen, my sanctuary, perfect down to the last quarter-inch, perfect for me. One of the biggest blows was painting out one wall of the dining room that I'd painted barn red to serve as visual punctuation in an otherwise long set of rooms. Aside from the kitchen, it was the biggest personal stamp I'd put on the house, and watching it go from red to primer white felt like I was being drained of blood myself. Now it matches the other butter-colored walls in the room, and the whole room feels denuded of character and substance.
After a month of packing, sorting, and tossing, the process is much easier. I've been stripping my home of its personality, of what's made it mine, so that now I am restless find a buyer and move on. Years after we had moved out of the house I had grown up in, even into my thirties, when I dreamed of "home," the house I saw in my dreams was that one. I wonder now how long I will dream of this house, how quickly the memories built here will fade, and even what and where my next home will be. What i