So ... the Official Movers came, and everything that is going to the US disappeared off on a truck - first to Bristol, where it will be put on a pallet and wrapped in clingfilm and then taken to Portishead and from there shipped off to LA. And then? Who knows when it will arrive ... I was up very very early, doing all those last-minute tasks like emptying the coal from the brass coal scuttle (who knows when that was last used?).
Which leaves me with, still, some imponderables, and the handful of things that I hadn't seen that the men had left behind - very little, because they were conscientious and efficient - and all the things that need rehoming, like a bag of useful fabrics to a crafting project, and so on. My angry moment today came early, when I went to find the vintage sewing machine in the garage - kept in a handsome mahogany box - and found that the box was empty. I guess my father sold it at the same time that, evidently, he sold my mother and grandmother's fountain pens - as ever, if he didn't want to keep something, off it went, at least for a while ... (leaving me with all the things in the garage - the old screws, the pieces of wood, the clock springs - that might "come in useful" sometime. And so they might, but probably not. Off they go, tomorrow, into a Clearabee truck).
I thought that the house would be too sad and empty to stay in for much longer, and without much furniture, so this is my last night here (and it's the last night that I'll have useful things like pillows and sheets, which plays a role ...). I'll just be here in the day times, doing yet more carrying of books to Oxfam, etc. But even without the paintings and the prints and without very much furniture, I'm surprised and a bit disconcerted how much it is still itself - I guess that would be, as much as anything, its light, the shapes of its rooms, the sounds. You can't export the creak on the stairs.
The best bit of the day? The neighbors' cats, Tom and Sam, mousing in the garden. They love the wilderness.
And now - as one does, on one's last night in a home one's known for 62 years, to - well, no, not raise a glass, but teach (via Zoom). Because Los Angeles is 8 hours behind us, and my graduate class starts at 2 p.m./10 p.m. here...
Sending a big hug across the ether. You're doing a very, very hard thing!
ReplyDeletethank you so very much, WG (& co)! Getting there ... it's suddenly much easier now that most of the furniture is gone, after all - all the tatty old rugs went today, so it's not looking nearly so much as though it's trying to hang onto its earlier identity ...
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