Moving Tales – Home-Home to Home

The past few months have been extraordinary. We have been reevaluating our nest. The home in which the son was born, the one in which the daughter grew up, the trees and squirrels that had become a constant feature of my life, was all going to change, and we did not know how to deal with it.

This home was the start and end of every journey, short or long. Every time we turned into the community from the road, we sang a silly song that we used to sing in our school days. The father sang it once when we entered the old home, and it felt just right. 

The son puckered his face up and said miserably. “The new house may be home, but this one will always be home-home for me.” I agreed with the fellow, and we sat down discussing all the things that we had enjoyed in our home-home. The californian blue jays that mistook our stained glass paper on our high windows for flowers and knocked on them every year, the squirrels who did not set store by such things as property ownership and such, (Those trees were theirs no matter what the banks and property tax managers say) , the courtyard that was always lively with friends and neighbors who had become extended family over the years, the children who had grown into lovely young adults in the decade and a half that we lived there, our neighbor’s envy when they found we always parked both our cars inside the garage and not on the street outside due to limited parking spots, the mailmen. Most importantly, the sense of belonging that only a true home could make you feel.

Change is never easy, but a change after 14 years? I shuddered every time I peeked into a closet. I have no problems believing the universe is expanding all the time. Our home, which was positively huge when we first moved in, was a little cluttered with books, and papers, true, but over time had expanded in its capacity as well. Every closet seemed to have an infinite extensibility charm placed on them. 

How else could one drawer measuring about 6 X 12 X 6 inch hold the following?

• Glitter Pens – 62 – just for fun, I tested them out, and grew bored about the 19th pen as they were all dry. That’s how writers live – life on the edge you know?
• Notepads – dozens of them half-filled.They had an assortment of stories, outlines, sketches, doodlings by the daughter, half hearted poems, world-building fun, grocery lists, to-do lists and notes from meetings. 
• Half broken crayons – was there really a crayon war in the world of closets? I smiled in spite of the overwhelming urge to continue cleaning. Those who have not yet read the charming children’s book, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt, and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers – please do. A sunset always has a certain whimsy attached to it afterward. #TheDayTheCrayonsQuit 

• Bills dating from 2007
• Push pins that poked when you ran your hand over the contents
• Spectacles – the father-in-law’s, mine, the father’s, the daughter’s and a couple of ski glasses that wouldn’t fit a puppy. Maybe from that ski trip 7 years ago when the son was a toddler?
• Hairpins, rubber bands, bracelets, bindis, ‘mood’ rings (these were a craze when the daughter was in her unicorn, mermaid phase. Apparently, they changed colours detecting your moods. It was now black and refused to change colors. I wonder what mood that reflected) 
• A fine sprinkling of dust, mixed with sparkles( they did look magical shimmering there tantalizingly at the bottom of the drawer as if to say – there is a portal in here somewhere)

I sat wondering how we had muddled along for this long. Everytime someone in the family wanted something and hollered for it, I would be able to pick things out and just hand it to them. I marveled at the brain anew. How had I managed to find my way through this chaos? I had no idea, but the old brain nudged me to move on. I had dozens of drawers to go before I slept. This was no time to be musing on the inner workings of brains and neurons and neurotransmitters, and all the complex mechanisms that we are set up with, sitting up and using all these biomarvels to figure out closet contents.

There is a poem in here somewhere waiting to be fleshed out. Each drawer a galaxy? An expanding universe in a multiverse. 

I wizened up around the third drawer. I simply opened a drawer, picked out what I needed, and emptied the rest of the contents into trash bags. If something valuable was gone, well…we’ll know soon enough.