shereads
Sloganless
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2003
- Posts
- 19,242
I'm learning that it's possible to be lucky, relieved and filled with grief, all at the same time. Nearly a year after layoffs forced me to put the house on the market, I have a buyer. They want to close immediately - this coming Monday - and the suddenness has my brain spinning off into space.
I don't know whether to celebrate or cry like a little kid. I know how fortunate I am to have evaded foreclosure, and to be closing before the scary part of hurricane season.
But still.
This is the first home I ever made for myself, all by myself. I planted the African Tulip Tree that will come into bloom this summer. The heliconias in my cutting garden were brown sticks when I bought them as root-stock; now they reach 18 feet and produce bizarre red-orange flowers the size of your arm. I placed every stone of the garden path, covered a fence with blooming sky-vine, planted fern beds, angel-trumpet trees, fragrant jasmine and stephanotis. In the months before I knew I'd have to leave, I painted my rooms in colors of sea-glass and twilight.
Once, my parents posed for snapshots in front of these banana trees - my dad so proud, you'd have thought his daughter built the Trump Tower. A thousand times, my dog leaped off the back deck to run her morning Crazy-Dog Circles. I don't think her feet touched the steps for the first few years we were here. Alfalfa was only a year old when we moved here from a studio apartment, and she took seriously the necessity of patrolling the perimeter, chasing squirrels, and lying on her back in the soft grass - showing her speckled belly to the sky, snapping at dust-motes and grinning a ridiculous grin. She may not have invented Glee, but she kept the concept alive. I loved and made love in this house. Hosted dear friends in this house.
I look out the door at the back deck and see my friend's dead child, Nina, sitting on the steps with her new puppy squirming in her lap, so alive that even all these years later I can't think of Nina and death together. I want to freeze the moment, cling to that little girl and tell her nothing is permanent, especially not whatever pain would make her take her own life a decade later.
I want to hold all these memories safe, and I don't know where I'll put them. They live here, in this house. So have I.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3236/2603440908_635f2a07a5_o.jpg
I don't know whether to celebrate or cry like a little kid. I know how fortunate I am to have evaded foreclosure, and to be closing before the scary part of hurricane season.
But still.
This is the first home I ever made for myself, all by myself. I planted the African Tulip Tree that will come into bloom this summer. The heliconias in my cutting garden were brown sticks when I bought them as root-stock; now they reach 18 feet and produce bizarre red-orange flowers the size of your arm. I placed every stone of the garden path, covered a fence with blooming sky-vine, planted fern beds, angel-trumpet trees, fragrant jasmine and stephanotis. In the months before I knew I'd have to leave, I painted my rooms in colors of sea-glass and twilight.
Once, my parents posed for snapshots in front of these banana trees - my dad so proud, you'd have thought his daughter built the Trump Tower. A thousand times, my dog leaped off the back deck to run her morning Crazy-Dog Circles. I don't think her feet touched the steps for the first few years we were here. Alfalfa was only a year old when we moved here from a studio apartment, and she took seriously the necessity of patrolling the perimeter, chasing squirrels, and lying on her back in the soft grass - showing her speckled belly to the sky, snapping at dust-motes and grinning a ridiculous grin. She may not have invented Glee, but she kept the concept alive. I loved and made love in this house. Hosted dear friends in this house.
I look out the door at the back deck and see my friend's dead child, Nina, sitting on the steps with her new puppy squirming in her lap, so alive that even all these years later I can't think of Nina and death together. I want to freeze the moment, cling to that little girl and tell her nothing is permanent, especially not whatever pain would make her take her own life a decade later.
I want to hold all these memories safe, and I don't know where I'll put them. They live here, in this house. So have I.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3236/2603440908_635f2a07a5_o.jpg
