The Things We Hold On To
I do my best to scrub away twenty-five years of negligence and nicotine while explaining the foreign concept of Craigslist to my mother. Taking the photos is even trickier since she didn’t do the few simple things I asked: Have all the items to be sold clean and ready with a price in mind. Clutter is everywhere and even if I were a professional photographer I’d have a hard time making these things look good.
“This bedroom set is mid-century modern. It has a king size headboard, two nightstands, a gentleman’s dresser, and another dresser and mirror,” she begins in her best ‘I may be poor now but I used to have money’ voice. I’m certain she is just getting started on the description and we have three more bedrooms, the kitchen, living room, store room and den to get to. Before Mom can get too far into the history I cut her off.
“Where are the other pieces? I see the nightstands and the dresser but this bed isn’t part of the set and we’re still missing a few pieces,” even I can hear the impatience in my voice and I silently chant calming mantras to keep myself in check.
“Oh, well, the headboard is in the store room, you remember, I covered it in that pretty fabric.” I cringe. “The other dresser is in the guest bedroom and I think the mirror is in the living room.”
“What happened to having all the pieces together so I could photograph it as a set?” Jesus, I’ve only been here ten minutes and I’m already irritated and ready to go.
“Well it’s not like you could have gotten the whole set in one photo anyway,” she snaps back.
No, but it would have been nice if you relocated some of these mountains of crap and kept matching pieces together. She promised this wouldn’t take more than an hour, liar. “Okay Mom, I’ll take separate shots, how much do you want for the set?” I take out my inventory sheet in anticipation, the sooner I can leave the better.
“I don’t know, nine hundred?” She shrugs. Nine hundred dollars? Is she crazy? I look at the scuffed tops, peeling laminate, rusty knobs and sigh.
“I think we need to be a little more practical. Ashley is advertising brand new bedroom sets for a grand and we need to sell quickly.” I let the consequence resonate a few seconds before I continue. Maybe if you hadn’t cashed in every penny of equity you could keep your house and your things. It was stupid, really stupid. My dad made the mortgage payments directly for twenty years so that nothing like this would ever happen. As soon as she had a clear title in hand she cashed in. Of course, that was before the real-estate market crashed, now she’s completely upside-down on the loan. I’d like to shoot the loan officer too, who gives a hundred and thirty thousand dollar loan to an unemployed, disabled, soon to be senior with no income? Sigh, “Lets list it at three fifty and if it doesn’t sell in a week we’ll drop the price again.” There’s no way in Hell it will sell for that.
We slowly work our way through English antiques, knickknacks, collections of WWII lithographs and various tea sets. “This is bone china, Nortake,” she says. Mom holds up a dusty white plate with a silver rim. We’ve eaten off of them only a handful of times, mostly on Thanksgivings before the divorce. “This was a wedding present from Pops, it’s a complete set,” she says running through a memorized inventory. “Pops” was my grandma’s second husband. They shared dirt poor roots but he was a self-made man, making millions in the early stages of aviation and did quite well in the stock market too. Because of Pops, my mom and grandmother both believed in knights in platinum armor, who come and pull women out of poverty and place them in beach houses. “It should be worth quite a bit.” A quick Google search confirms this and the malnourished teenager in me glares at her in disapproval. Growing up we had eight thousand dollar china and no food to put on it. “I really do hate to part with it.” I almost lose my mind.
As she pulls me from one room to the next I think of the expression, “A clean house, a clean mind,” and realize I’m dealing with one crazy bitch. I scan each room, mentally throwing things away, organizing, and trying to evaluate what she may end up with once we liquidate her assets.
“Oh, and in this room, I have some things I thought you’d want.” There is nothing in this house I want.
“Mom, stop.” She turns to me, messy hair, maniac faced.
“Stop what?”
“I think you’re overwhelmed. How about a new plan of action? You have some good stuff here, but it’s all buried. Why don’t we start by just tossing or donating the things you don’t need that aren’t worth much? Then we can see what we’re dealing with.” I try to read her: confusion, anxiety, resentment. She doesn’t have people, she has these things. A four bedroom, aging house full of things, until the bank forecloses anyway.
“Well, maybe, but that’s why I wanted you to look and see if there’s anything you want.” She opens the door to the fourth bedroom, bursting with plastic containers and so it begins. “Do you need any hangers?” Mom holds up a trash bag with bright colored hangers poking through the plastic in every direction and looks at me hopefully.
I raise my eyebrow, “trash em.”
“Well that’s just a waste,” she says hiding them in the back of the room. She picks up a cardboard box and hands it to me, darting her eyes away before making contact. Sitting on top is a sheet of spiral notebook paper with my young handwriting on it, “The Mom Song.” I can’t help but smile; it was the only song my brother and I ever wrote together before he passed. I read through it embarrassed, verse after verse of insults. She was a drunk, a lazy bitch, we couldn’t wait to leave. I try to catch her eye to see if she saw it too. She says nothing but her hurt feelings are evident. I shuffle through the time capsule, reminders that it wasn’t always so bad, a program from my first piano recital, photos of us as complete family, poems I wrote as a sad, angry teenager.
“I’ll take this box home and go through it.” That was a mistake. Now she is digging with a renewed flourish. “Mom, Mom! Stop, I’ll go through it, I’ll take anything I don’t want to lose, and we’ll get rid of the rest.” We are two stubborn animals glaring at each other.
“Fine,” she concedes, “I’ll start in the next room.”
I clear one small patch of dirty parquet tile and begin. One box at a time I sort, find nothing worth keeping, adding to the toss pile. There are boxes of linens, Jesus how many blankets does one person need? A chill reverberates through me remembering cold nights and then worse, sticky summers here in Florida without A.C., wringing out in sweat drenched sheets. I swiftly move them all to the toss pile. At least she fixed the air conditioner with a chunk of the equity loan not that it will do her any good when they throw her out on the street. I find one blanket that I hang on to, “The Tiger Blanket.” It was the biggest, warmest blanket in the house. One of the few good memories I have of my mom is her pulling it from the dryer and wrapping it around me and my brother to keep us both warm. That was before the dryer broke, nothing in this house ever got fixed we just became masters of adaptation.
It takes an eternity to work my way across the room, tossing, reminiscing, and seething at times. How could she let it get this bad? How could she let this happen? She’s not coming to live with me. I get to the double windows on the other side. This was my first room, Daddy planted roses outside my window, and they were the first thing I saw each morning. I peak outside to see they have been replaced by the peace lilies from my brothers’ funeral. Why do people give perennials at funerals? They are living reminders of death. “Okay, Mom, I’m done in here.”
“Oh good you’re taking all of this,” she smiles looking at the toss pile.
“Um, actually that’s the donation pile. These are the things I’m keeping.” I point to the box containing “The Mom Song,” the blanket, my grandmothers mirror, and a portrait of me and my brother Chris when we were very young.
“That’s it?” She is screaming and pulling things from the toss pile. “Your Great grandmother used these napkins every holiday,” she throws them at me. “These are cards you and Chris made me, and all these pictures, don’t you want these pictures?” Her eyes are a wall of tears and the crack in her voice tells me that the wall is about to crumble but she shakes her head angrily forcing them back. I’m impressed. “You are so fucking cold! When did you become such a heartless bitch?”
“Mom,” I fake a calm tone I perfected years ago dealing with her. “You are one person living in a four bedroom house. I share a tiny three bedroom apartment with my husband and three children. I just don’t have the space; you have to start parting with things.” I pick up the holiday napkins and put them in my keep pile to appease her.
She picks up a box with construction paper Easter bunnies and glittery cards. She stares down into it for a long time and I think she’s considering what I have said, but suddenly the rage returns. “Then you do it! I can’t just throw away the pieces I have left. You do it,” she growls again pushing it into my chest.
A memory crashes down on me. After the funeral I slipped off my shoes and climbed into Chris’s bed. His sheets smelled like his shampoo and I impaled myself onto the pillow inhaling every remaining essence before it was gone forever. Then I slept, I slept for hours waking to the sound of lingering mourners in the living room. In a trance I went into my bedroom to get a change of clothes and some personal items. I slept longer; Mom is outside my door in a whispered argument with my dad. Dad? “Let her sleep Rick, she’s very strong, but she’s exhausted.” I slept for weeks, waking only to be reminded that the nightmare was real. My things moved on top of Chris’ things. It was still his room, I was just living there. I heard Dad again, how much time has passed since the funeral? Weeks? Months? My door jerks open and he is hovering over me. He’s angry? Why? He’s never angry.
“Get out of this bed right now,” he yells at me, shocked I bolt upright. “I’m already mourning my son, I won’t lose my daughter too. Your mother does this, sleeps,” he says it like it’s a filthy word. “You’re depressed Katie, I understand. But, you will not lie in this bed and sleep your life away. He’s gone Katie. He’s dead, he’s never coming back.” His words rip me open, spilling bitter animosity and hopeless resentment. How can you be so cold?
I look at my mom. She never got up. No one ever told her to let it go, no one would say those things to a grieving mother. She is still impaling herself on memories, inhaling every lingering essence before it’s gone forever. I remember how it was two years before I could tolerate letting go of anything and I still couldn’t be the one to do it.
I had called my friend Aaron and asked if he could come help me with something. When he got there I was sitting on my bed with an empty shoe box. He looked at me expectantly. “In that bathroom”, I nod to the door, “are dozens of reminders that I dance around in the shower, ignore as I brush my teeth. They aren’t comforting anymore.” Aaron took the box and gave me a look that asked if I was sure. I nodded. He was in the bathroom for a long time, at least it felt that way, and I tried not to think about him placing Chris’ razor and toothbrush into that box. His soap, shampoo, and comb must have followed. Aaron emerged with his head down.
“Okay Katie, I’m going to go home now and I’m going to take this box with me. Are you okay with that?” I nod, grateful that he understood, grateful that he didn’t think I was crazy.
As Aaron left I walked into the bathroom. The few things left belonged to me and it was liberating. I didn’t need Chris’s toothbrush to remember his smile or his shampoo to remember his smell. I needed to let go to move forward.
“Okay Mom, I guess I can take a few boxes with me.” This is what she needs. Why didn’t I realize it sooner? It just took her fifteen years longer. The crease in her brow softens and relief spreads across her face as if I shot her up with morphine. We load boxes into my SUV and she hugs me. It’s a rare and uncomfortable embrace but I let her hold onto me because she still needs to hold onto something.
“She whispers, “thank you,” into my hair.
“No problem Mom. I come through The Fort twice a week, if you want to leave boxes on your porch, I’ll swing by and pick them up. In the meantime, I’ll start posting these things on Craigslist.”
Mom takes a deep breath, “yes, yes I feel like I might even be able to get some more done today, now that we put a dent in it.”
“Great Mom, I’ll swing by on Wednesday. Try to have three boxes of stuff you are willing to part with.” She nods in response.
On the way home I drop the boxes off at the Goodwill and pick up a copy of “Apartment Finder.”