there are times when i want nothing more than to move out of this house. the windows that i put in with an ex trap me inside, yielding only dusty, cobweb strewn glimpses of the world outside. The walls crawling with mold and the leaking roof remind me i'm living beyond my means in a house i can't afford to keep. i've spent too long on borrowed time, letting the house depreciate little by little with deferred maintenance.
my sister says the house is a leash that binds me with responsibility. the rooms are packed with stuff that's not mine, but left here over the years by the residents that have come and gone. i've never decorated, never fully made this place mine.
now my hand might soon by forced. my sister doesn't want to keep the house, and while i'm conflicted, i don't feel i have the right to convince her otherwise. part of me aches like muscles stiff with stillness. at last, i think, i will be free. i'm itching to start a life with my dearest love.
but then my eye travels along the redwood fence, now silvered, that i built using only hand tools (i was too scared of the power tools to use them) and my mind lingers on the kitty graveyard on the side of the house, which holds the cats that have lived her as long as i have and i think of the cats living now, who know no other home.
the roses are in bloom now, i see. Lascivious and voluptuous things, their thorny stems sagging with the weight of their pendulous blossoms. I clip some and bring them inside, where their heady scent penetrates the room, and i remember how my mother would lean up on tiptoe with her slight frame, close her eyes, and smell them.
"oh annie," she would say. "don't they smell wonderful?"
how can i give up those roses? how i can i ever entrust them another's care?
3 comments:
it is hard, very very hard, to let go of a place. it sounds like there is a lot of poetry in this place for you.
i send many wishes that if/when you do let go, it is a peaceful and timely parting and that you are ready. that is the best one can wish for when it comes to leave a house/home!
What can I say?
Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
reading back, i realize how strongly this post was influenced by Brideshead Revisited, an excellent Brittish mini series based on Evelyn Waugh's book by the same name. The story is told thorugh Charles who frequently lapses into lengthy, flowery monologues.
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