Paul Avenue
Everything was old and tired and worn. The chintz on the wingback armchairs was split and the green background in places had faded to near white. The small Art Deco vase that had sat forever on the Queen Ann table was chipped. The off white silky drapes hung limp; gray dust shadowed their folds. The house smelled old and empty and untended.
I sighed and thought how everything in my childhood home looked exactly as it had 35 years ago, only totally spent. It was surreal. It was strange. And, it was weird. It looked as if my parents had up and left one day leaving everything in its place, as if they would return in a short time. They didn’t.
My mom had died two years earlier. My dad was in their Florida condo and was too ill to help me. He said even if he was well, he just couldn’t bear to do it.
I was there to pack up. I felt the hook in my chest, the tension headache coming on, so I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, just like I do when I’m practicing yoga. Packing up. Packing up, I kept thinking. How can I do this? It’s too much: too much to deal with emotionally and physically.
A 3,000 square foot house lived in for 60 years and packed, and I mean packed. Packed to the gills. Every drawer, closet, and room contained stuff. Every empty nook was filled. The basement rafters and crawl spaces were jammed full of old bent curtain rods, dirt covered Lionel Train boxes, paint cans, plastic covered fabric from the sofa slipcover back in 1963. You get the picture.
And then there was the emotional part. My mother had loved this house on Paul Avenue, poured herself into its appearance and decoration. This was her home. This was the last physical expression of whom she was that I would experience. And I was in charge of taking it apart.
Our Living Room — Unchanged for 35 Years
Every object, painting, chest, table, piece of crystal or china had been chosen and placed by my mother’s eye and hand. She’d created the still lives on the tabletops, the bookshelves, and the mantel. As I walked from room to room, I remembered when we’d driven to Lahaska, Pa to look at the 19th century chest in the dining room. I remembered learning to dance the jitterbug with my dad in front of the 1950’s oil painting of the bridge covered woodland stream. Now two years after her death, the dried pomegranates she’d arranged in the silver bowl five years ago sat dust covered in the center of the dining room table. The dozens of family photos sat crowded together on the piano as usual. Memories leapt out of everything. Pictures, movies unreeled in my brain. I grew up here, was happy and sad here, argued and laughed here.
Fortunately for me, I wouldn’t have to pack up all alone. My two childhood friends, Cheryl and Fran, helped me a lot. We spent whole weekends together. My partner, Kevin, came several times helping me to make decisions about what to keep and what to toss. My twin 24-year-old daughters helped too. And through the relator, I had the help of the dismantling-sixty-years-of-stuff expert, Nancy. Taking apart my mother’s home took 10 weekends of cleaning out and packing up.
Rosemont Mini-Skirt Mob
It was hard, really hard especially that first weekend. By the end, I’d hardened. I’d become an expert at throwing away without remorse. I threw away the three dozen framed photos on the piano. We all had these pictures in our own homes. I even threw away the hundreds of photos of long dead ancestors. No one had any idea who they were. Chipped crystal and china that my mother had loved so much she’d kept the damaged ones, I tossed without a pang. Dirty, faded crewel pillows I’d embroidered for my mom 40 years ago, into the Hefty bags they went.
We recycled what we could. Old towels and sheets went to the animal shelter. Dr. Clutter, a recycling company, picked up three truckloads of stuff. Weekend by weekend, Paul Avenue changed from being somehow my mother and my mother’s home to a house. A pretty 1920’s painted brick house with a slate roof and the original cooper gutters. A very desirable house to old house lovers according to the dismantler, Nancy and the realtor, Barb. As my friends, daughters, and I cleaned out and packed up together, we reminisced. Rooms and objects brought up old stories, some we’d forgotten until then. Yes, the house was packed with a mountain of stuff, but it was packed even more with our memories.
On those packing-up weekends, I was a teenager once again, laughing with Cheryl and Fran about sleepovers, remembering the dinner parties my mother made for our group of six girlfriends. My twin daughters, Anna Lou and Campbell, and I talked about the weekends spent with my mom and dad at the pool or the golf course. We laughed about how Anna Lou had peeled the wallpaper off of the bedroom wall during her nap. (I’d thought my mom would be really upset; she wasn’t.) As we packed up the kitchen, Campbell reminded us of my mother baking blueberry pies and never being too busy or too tired to make French toast or sit at the kitchen counter and play a hand of gin.
I realized dismantling my mom’s house wasn’t getting rid of my mom or my dad or my life. I realized we were dismantling a place that was once beautiful and interesting and meaningful – and now it wasn’t. Just because it was gone didn’t mean it was gone in my imagination. I could be right back in our living room or kitchen or my childhood bedroom, anytime I chose.
My Parent’s Den and Their Two Chairs
I realized too, that family traditions and rituals go on. We still have my mom’s blueberry pie and special muffins every time Campbell bakes them for us in my mom’s muffin and pie tins. I use my mom’s sterling forks, knives, and spoons in our home now. She’s with me at every meal. Anna Lou wears my mom’s gold scallop shell locket and remembers long heart-felt talks with her Nana about what’s important in life and how to see the world as a place of love and beauty and possibility.
Paul Avenue sold on the first day it was on the market – we had five contracts, most over the asking price. A young woman bought it. She fell in love when she walked into the dining room and looked out its many windows to the sweet brick patio and original fishpond surrounded with hostas, rhododendrons, and hemlocks. The same view my mom had fallen in love with sixty years earlier. A circle.
My Mother’s Favorite View
Now, many months later, I consider my stuff and begin clearing out. I’m reading Paris In Love, a memoir by romance novelist and English Lit professor, Eloisa James. She packed up and cleared out most of her stuff after she recovered from breast cancer. I’m also reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I totally get why clearing out makes you feel lighter and freer. I totally get why some stuff is a burden and some stuff isn’t. It seems to me that stuff has a shelf life. When it’s expired, pack it up.
The Fish Pond and Patio
Seeking The Wild 