making sense
I am (we are) cleaning out the basement in preparation for the big move. There is so much history down there that I wasn’t really prepared to deal with. It’s just stuff- but- it’s my wedding dress, pictures of the house we built, furniture my grandpa made that reminds me of other pieces I left behind.
My grandfather made furniture, clocks, toys- all kinds of things. He died September 9th 2001- 2 days before the towers fell, and 75 years to the day from when he entered this country as an immigrant from Romania/Hungary. (the area was romania when he was born but hungary when he left) I was hugely pregnant with Audrey, and we were very close to moving into our new house.
In 2001 we were married for a bit over a year- we had so much hope for the future. We were building a house in a ‘suburban neighborhood’, Wes had a good job, I was finished with massage school. I had a fancy new volvo wagon. From all the instability and drama of our early 20’s we were moving toward the perfect family- the perfect life.
By 2006, he quit his job and started his business, our brand new suburban neighborhood turned out to be unfriendly and awful, our beautiful house was foreclosed upon, my fancy car was dragged away while I watched in the night by the repo man- while my husband was out with his 21 year old lover. I was depressed and in pain and the verbal abuse really started in earnest.
We had to leave our house and we left so much behind, furniture that my grandfather built pains me the most. When I look at the pieces that I still have it reminds me of the pieces I never should have allowed him to throw away. He didn’t like them, they were old fashioned, where would we ever put them anyway, etc. etc. I gave in because it was easier than fighting, and besides he was my husband- he would be with me forever anyway- why would I hold on to things-just in case?
I grieve the record cabinet he made for my grandma that I can see and feel in my minds eye, that as a baby, I ran my fingers over the slats in the doors and played with the white knobs.
So now I go through the boxes in the basement, preparing for another chapter in my life and I am ambushed by lives I left behind. There’s a picture of Shannon, smiling in a boat, there is a wedding dress, there are tiny baby clothes from a baby that is now tall enough to look me in the eye, there is terrible poetry from high school.
So many pictures, so much stuff, so many memories. I feel the need to scrapbook them all, although it would take me another lifetime. I need time to stop for a moment so I can make a narrative, a timeline, a story of my life that would somehow make sense of it all..