A couple of weeks ago my mother emailed me with "We're moving into a smaller place, so if you want anything from the house, now's the time."
I hemmed and hawed and talked to some people on Facebook (including my aunt Susan) and, well, now I'm at my parents' house in Burke, because they're moving out at the end of the week.
I'm still not sure what to do about my relationship with them. We had a long talk Monday night. The conclusion that I came to is that I am having a really hard time reconciling qualities like "love" and "empathy" with "votes Republican," because to my mind Republican policies are always implicitly and sometimes explicitly opposed to those things. And the end stage of that argument is "Yes, but Fox News is lying to you" and that is not a fight that I have anything like the energy to have.
I had dinner with Alison last night, which was a good re-grounding. The EPA is not in good shape, these past three years, and that's fairly typical across the board for government agencies; I'm not imagining it.
Oh well.
This (the second half) is a good description of what it's (still, to some extent) like to visit here. I can mostly fight it off or not succumb to it, but when I'm marinating in memories...
Tuesday I sorted through about half of my stuff, mostly saying either "I don't remember this, it can go in the trash" or "I remember this, and it can go in the trash." In some cases I'm a little sad that I'll never again have the memory triggered by the physical object. More often there's a sense of relief that it's okay to get rid of some of this now. I've kept a couple of smaller things, because they were important in some way, but far more of the Important things are ... not important enough to keep.
Wednesday night I got through most of the rest. This was harder, because as I dig through boxes I'm getting further back in my childhood. The 2.5 boxes of stuffed animals ("friends") in particular took, will take, some work. Or at least some mentally girding myself before being ready to dig into them. This afternoon, I hope.
The difference between "i will probably never see this again (but it's there if i want to)" and "i will never see this again" turns out to be significant. Which is also why I'm here at all, so.
Most of the stuff to be moved got packed yesterday or the day before. Now they're wrapping the last of it and loading it onto a truck, and then it goes away.
My parents built and moved into this house in 2000. Before that they (we) lived in a townhouse less than a mile away. I drove home last night thinking "I won't ever need to go west on Braddock and turn left at Burke Lake Road again," something I've been doing literally since I learned to drive. And it mostly doesn't affect me, except for how it does, and I don't entirely know how or why.
I hemmed and hawed and talked to some people on Facebook (including my aunt Susan) and, well, now I'm at my parents' house in Burke, because they're moving out at the end of the week.
I'm still not sure what to do about my relationship with them. We had a long talk Monday night. The conclusion that I came to is that I am having a really hard time reconciling qualities like "love" and "empathy" with "votes Republican," because to my mind Republican policies are always implicitly and sometimes explicitly opposed to those things. And the end stage of that argument is "Yes, but Fox News is lying to you" and that is not a fight that I have anything like the energy to have.
I had dinner with Alison last night, which was a good re-grounding. The EPA is not in good shape, these past three years, and that's fairly typical across the board for government agencies; I'm not imagining it.
Oh well.
This (the second half) is a good description of what it's (still, to some extent) like to visit here. I can mostly fight it off or not succumb to it, but when I'm marinating in memories...
Tuesday I sorted through about half of my stuff, mostly saying either "I don't remember this, it can go in the trash" or "I remember this, and it can go in the trash." In some cases I'm a little sad that I'll never again have the memory triggered by the physical object. More often there's a sense of relief that it's okay to get rid of some of this now. I've kept a couple of smaller things, because they were important in some way, but far more of the Important things are ... not important enough to keep.
Wednesday night I got through most of the rest. This was harder, because as I dig through boxes I'm getting further back in my childhood. The 2.5 boxes of stuffed animals ("friends") in particular took, will take, some work. Or at least some mentally girding myself before being ready to dig into them. This afternoon, I hope.
The difference between "i will probably never see this again (but it's there if i want to)" and "i will never see this again" turns out to be significant. Which is also why I'm here at all, so.
Most of the stuff to be moved got packed yesterday or the day before. Now they're wrapping the last of it and loading it onto a truck, and then it goes away.
My parents built and moved into this house in 2000. Before that they (we) lived in a townhouse less than a mile away. I drove home last night thinking "I won't ever need to go west on Braddock and turn left at Burke Lake Road again," something I've been doing literally since I learned to drive. And it mostly doesn't affect me, except for how it does, and I don't entirely know how or why.
you packed up every room and then you cried and went to bed
but today you closed the door and said "we have to get a move on.
it's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead,
we push ourselves ahead."