Wednesday, September 19, 2018

drying dusters


in my parents' front hall.  Which is not at all the same as Dry as Dust.  

My enthusiasm that they have someone coming in five days a week for a couple of hours to - to what?  Help?  Clean?  has been severely muted now that my father tells me that she is very good at Throwing Things Out.  There are things - plenty of things - that mean - well, don't in some ways mean a lot, but that are, nevertheless, part of my own history.  Do I want to hang onto them?  No.  But would I like to have taken a small square of the blanket woven from shoddy in my great-grandfather's shoddy mill?  Yes.  And then there are plenty of objects, like the eiderdown that I had when I was little, that all I want to do - to have done - is take a photograph.  Earlier this year I made my father promise not to throw things out before I could do just that because, as I told him, there's no way that I would expect him to know what had sentimental value to me and what didn't.  But that promise didn't stick.  Instead, I had an earful about my Not Having Been Here - which, given the circumstances of the past few months, seemed a little unfair.  I'm sure this happens to so many of us, but I'm using this space, for once, to wail and lament.

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