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A Change in the ‘Hood

A Change in the ‘Hood

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Last year this time two longtime neighbors moved to Hawaii and sold their house. This year, the neighbors across the street moved out, almost on the same exact day. This time the move was only two miles away rather than 4,700 — but the effect is the same: a hole in the neighborhood, in the fabric of life in this little corner of the world.

When John and Jill moved in, they had a baby about the same age Suzanne was when we arrived here. Now their baby is in high school, and his two brothers not long behind him. It is only life, of course, only time. But when it’s the people you wave to on a daily basis, who you chat with at the mailbox, who are part of your life in the way that good neighbors are, it makes a difference.

The house won’t be sold till the spring, so for now it just sits there empty, a missing tooth in a lopsided grin.

(This is actually our house, but theirs isn’t much different.)

Decluttering Times Two

Decluttering Times Two

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Am I the last of a dying breed? Not just a dying breed, but a unique breed — perhaps one of the only generations that must manage both digital and actual files? I’ve spent part of an evening pulling photographs off an old computer that is less-than-accessible due to charging issues, and as I’ve been doing so, I’ve wondered, do we have any parallels in history?

Were there once people who had to contend with both stone tablets and papyrus? With the scroll and the codex?

As the pace of change increases, the pace of managing that change falls on the shoulders of those who not only have a crammed-full hard disk but also scores of musty, sagging boxes in the basement.

Where to start? How to proceed? One must be ruthless on both scores, I suppose, must pitch the papers and books — plus ancient computer files, too. Yesterday was a good day for that, with a sheaf of papers recycled at the office, and desktop computer files trashed at home. It’s a bit like bailing out the ocean with a thimble — but it’s a start.

(How many of these need to go? Quite a few!)

Seeing Clean

Seeing Clean

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I knew I’d gotten serious about cleaning when I found myself scrubbing the washing machine, wiping off the soap residue, concentrating on a few dark streets I found on the front of the machine that finally went away with enough time and elbow grease.

The immediate excuse was my brother Drew’s visit, but it was more than that. It was as if a switch were triggered and the smudges I usually don’t see were decked out in crazy neon colors, begging to be obliterated.

So on top of the usual routine — the dusting and vacuuming and scouring — there was using the vacuum attachment to siphon out crevices in the basement, squeegeeing the front and back doors, washing the parakeets’ cage cover … and much, much more.

It’s all a matter of seeing. Usually, I absolve the clutter, move past what I know I can’t remedy because there’s only enough time for the basics in my life and cleaning isn’t one of them.

But this weekend I allowed myself time to dust and vacuum and sweep and scour, granted myself permission to use more hours than usual for those purposes. It’s always comforting to accomplish much with little mental effort, to complete tasks always looming.

And now, I harvest the result: an almost spartanly clean house. Key word “almost” … of course.

Last Day, Redux

Last Day, Redux

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To be the parent of young adults means getting used to the filling and emptying of the house that gave them birth. The house didn’t really give them birth, of course — I did. But sometimes it feels like it did, the rooms have so absorbed the people who grew up in them.

This old house has gotten pretty good at it by now. People move out, then in … then out again. The house accommodates it all — I just hang on for the ride.

Today is the last day of school in Fairfax County, a day my kids once celebrated with shaving cream fights at the bus stop, a celebratory fast-food lunch and the ceremonial viewing of one of our fave family movies, “The Music Man.” I hear the buses already, revving up for early dismissal. Soon they’ll be disgorging young’uns into an endless summer.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was meeting my own girls down at the corner. Now Celia (front row, left) is about to move in with her friend Jessy (standing right next to her), who lives … on the other side of the country.

It’s a grand adventure for all of us, the ones just starting out and the ones who’ve lived long enough to marvel at it all.

What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath

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Every so often comes a cleaning chore that makes us bare our souls, that drives us into the hidden places where we’ve stuffed photographs and papers and maps, and makes us pull them out. Every so often a cleaning chore comes that makes us ashamed of ourselves.

For me, that one comes today, when the Stainless technicians come to shampoo the carpet.

I am, first of all, ashamed that the carpet is in such bad shape. Copper has grown more anxious as he’s gotten older and has developed the habit of scratching rugs when he’s upset. His bladder control ain’t what it used to be either.

And then there’s all the stuff I’ve been storing on the floor in the bedrooms. This is how I’ve absorbed the papers and photographs from Mom and Dad’s house —by transferring them directly from underneath their beds to underneath mine.

I marvel at how much I can cram into corners and closets — and how easily it slips out of awareness when not in my direct line of vision. But today it’s right there, difficult to ignore.

So Stainless Carpet Cleaners will come, and Stainless will clean and Stainless will leave. But the stuff will remain. And dealing with the stuff…  is up to me.

Cleaning Up

Cleaning Up

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Today has been set aside for office cleanup, and I’ve worn jeans for the occasion. But it occurs to me that the tidying up I most need to do is not tangible but virtual. And for this, most any attire will do.

I seldom delete email. I spent 20 minutes yesterday looking for a document that’s nowhere to be found.  Is it on my desktop? Dd I accidentally save it in a strange file? Global computer searches have yielded no trace. But while I was looking for it I shuddered at the disarray I found.

This is the way digital cleanup happens for me: a search and rescue mission.

Meanwhile, I don’t want these jeans to go to waste. I’ll find some real files to toss somewhere!

Staging a Revolt

Staging a Revolt

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Last weekend’s getaway not only involved a garret room, but it also brought me face-to-face with the practice of staging. Not the kind they do on Broadway … but the kind they do in competitive real estate markets.

Staging, from what I can tell, involves taking every shred of personality out of a house and leaving behind what you might find in a high-end hotel room. Potential buyers can see the house stripped of unnecessary clutter and distraction, can see just its bones.  No bills thrown on the dining room table, no keys hung by the back door.
But what if you’re looking not for the bones of a house but for its soul? What if you are looking for a house that touches you, a house where happy lives, real lives, have been lived? 
If I was shown a staged home, I would open drawers and shower curtains, would look high and low for signs of habitation. I’d pay less attention to the perfect birch logs in the fireplace and more to the almost hidden crack in the closet door. 
Agents assume that buyers want a blank canvas on which to sketch a new scene.  I’d rather paint on top of what’s already there. 
View from a Garret

View from a Garret

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Over the weekend I stayed with friends in the city and slept in a third-floor bedroom. When I saw the slanting eaves, the bed tucked up by the two windows, I wanted to cry out with delight.

It’s not that I don’t love my own house, my own bed. It’s cozy here, and warm. I like our house and neighborhood.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t crave a garret. To be writing up there would be to channel Jo March, with her apples and her writing smock. A romantic notion? Of course!

From what I gather, the derivation of the “writer in a garret” phrase was the English writer Samuel Foote, who said that an author’s fate was to be “born in a cellar and liv[e] in a garret.” Bohemian poverty has been celebrated in literature throughout the last couple of centuries.

But it’s not the poverty I like about the garret; it’s the combination of coziness and expansiveness. And it’s the view. It’s being able to look out over rooftops and treetops. It’s perspective — something I think all writers (and all people, for that matter) need.

A Place for Everything

A Place for Everything

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Sometimes on mornings at home, in what I know is an elaborate form of procrastination, I tidy up before I begin writing. It’s part compulsion. I like to look up from the screen and see some order in the universe — even if the order is only that I moved the covered rocking chairs from in front of the deck door so they don’t block the view.

This morning while putting papers in the recycling bin and tucking a cloth bag up on a shelf where I keep shopping bags … I thought about the phrase “a place for everything and everything in its place.”
I’m a big believer in this. It’s how I keep from losing things (including my mind).

The problem with this method is that I avoid the place where much of the stuff I’m moving should actually go — and that is what we used to call the circular file, the wastebasket.

So much of my tidying is a futile attempt to stem the flow. Until I purge — really purge — my tidying up will only be of the most superficial order. But this morning, like so many others, a superficial order is all I need.

There’s a place for me, too — and it’s sitting on this couch, typing on these keys.

Fruit Bowl

Fruit Bowl

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I’m not sure why I did this, except that I felt energetic this morning, like I was coming out of a fog (post-Thanksgiving funk?). The fruit looked sleek and display-able, and the basket was on the kitchen table, holding napkins, and suddenly it seemed a crime to keep the fruit in its net bags and not in this pretty braided ceramic basket-bowl that Ellen gave me several Christmases ago.

So the napkins now sit in a pile on the table and the fruit poses on the counter. It’s become a still life, an object not just of utility but of beauty.

Isn’t the best kind of beauty the accidental kind? The graceful arching of tree limbs over a road. The glitter of icicles in the sun. And the gathering of fruit in a bowl.