I am spending one last night in the house I have lived in for 25 years and I am tripping out a little.
I have been seeing ghosts all week. Packing is nuts- I have such a new appreciation for people who move, who have moved, who move multiple times, who move with little kids, who move across country- all the different types of moves are so hard! And there is so. much. stuff.
But the coolest part is finding all the memories. We lived such a good life in that little house. And now that it is getting broken down, we are down to just a couple of pieces of furniture, it feels so much like it did in the beginning. It's like I'm going back in time and all of the pictures and memories I have been packing are swirling around my head like I stuck it in the Pensieve from Harry Potter. I walk through the kitchen and I think of all the meals, and shots, and jokes and parties and times we spent in there. Rainbow light from my prisms spinning around the walls. I look at the laundry room door and I picture sitting on the floor, Marley in my lap, giving birth to all 10 puppies as she pushed against me.
Our backyard that used to have a sunflower house, and a little garden and our avocado tree, where Bash first used to skateboard and hit his head that time. Later, soccer goals with Marley playing goalie against Bash and Cameron. Greg always on the bbq, a million Coors Lights. Kids, then teenagers, beer pong and music and kegs. The deck Greg built by hand, so strong you could "land a plane on that thing". All of our signs, the lights! We loved our backyard so much.
Bash's door, with all the stickers, that used to have the water color sign I painted that said "Shhhhhhh baby sleeping" and he did. He slept through all of it, such a good baby, such an important part of all of us. Jeff's backpack in the corner of Bash's room, when he lived with us as our Au Pair. Shir Khan, looking right into the crib like he couldn't wait to snack on that little baby, Peter Pan and the pals flying over his head, that glowing Moon.
Our room. Where we slept and fought, and fell more in love. I fed my baby in that bed, and napped and put together Christmas stockings and Easter Baskets and talked on the phone and cried and read and dreamed.
Even our little corner of the dining room. So many good jokes around that table! All of our Thanksgivings, and all the kids that came over to eat over the years, piling food on that table until there wasn't an inch left. Squeezing more on still. There is still glitter in the cracks from all of the crafts, pencil marks from all the homework done on it. The dinner music play lists. That big burn from the time we left a candle burning, all the times it looked so pretty, all the kids who slept underneath it after all the parties.
Our whole living room, The football and baseball games. The before softball game gatherings. The playdates, the entire room taken over by the most amazing Batman set ups, with a zip line running from Wayne Manor down into a Bat Cave for all the good guys and Alec Baldwin leading the bad guy gang over in the Fisher Price Castle. Girls Game Nights. Old Lady Book Clubs. All the parties, the card games and dominoes, all the friends and kids who slept on the couches and the floor. All the movie nights and setting up the whole floor like a giant bed to watch all together. Greg hanging out in the window while he barbequed. The Easter egg hunts. The Christmases. New Years Eves. The way the vines hang in front of our windows, the lights in the backyard glowing through.
All of our life.
The ghosts are in every corner, every time I look around. Our friends and family who were gone too soon. Our childhood and our youth. Our dog. My baby. I am putting that part of my life in a box and saying goodbye to a life that I thought I would have forever. And I know in thirty days, sixty days, I will feel the freedom that comes with this change, but right now, today, I have to take a day to say goodbye.
inside you, the time moves, and she don't fade
the ghost in you, she don't fade
The #9thStSocialClub is dead. Long live the #9thStSocialClub.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
on the street where you live
In the last few days big things have happened and I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't updated the few of you that I asked to read my first high drama post.
We found a place to live! The address is the first thing that appealed to me, 2117 Alameda Ave. If you grew up in Alameda, you know Alameda Ave is a great little block, and I am stoked on the 2117 address, it seems symetrical and neat. I don't know if that makes sense, but the numbers "go together". It's a back house behind a large house with three or four units. It's light green-yellowish, which works for us too. There is a small yard that wraps around the house, mostly dirt but it could BE something. Two bedrooms, one little bathroom. It's smaller than our house now but it's a HOUSE. Not an apartment, or shared walls. And I know there are a million cute places like that, but it was going to be hard to get used to after only living in houses since I was like 9 and moved out of our apartment in NY. And even then, our only neighbor was the strip club downstairs. But anyway.
It's kind of little. And dark. All of the wood is dark, and the windows are smaller and there are not as many. And it makes me feel small, that I am even thinking of the negative things. I should be thrilled. We found a HOUSE. But I am not all the way, because I am clearly a small spoiled child who just wants to stay in MY house. I want my windows, and all my light. I don't even know if there will be a window for my prisms. I am nerd; I have had prisms hanging in my windows since I was in the 6th grade, and dancing rainbow light is just what I expect to have. What if there are no windows for the prisms, what if there are no rainbows? Why am I so lame that I demand rainbows? I know it's not reasonable. I know I should be thankful, and in so many ways I so am.
I am also very, very overwhelmed. I lived my life knowing I would be able to be in my house forever, and so have kept everything I have ever wanted to keep, even the stuff I probably should have gotten rid of, for 25 years. And I am the historian of our little world. I am the one who keeps all the pictures, those videos, that notebook we used to use to keep score for our Uno games, and also drew in and made jokes with. I keep all the treasures that kids make me. I keep t shirts with sentimental value. I am a softy who loves my things, and I keep them all, because I had the place to keep and store and hang on to. And now I don't, so where do I start? It's a rhetorical question, because I have already started, but the work I have done seems like the smallest amount compared with what is still ahead. I look at all the stuff and I am almost paralyzed with the work that needs to be done.
And then there's more news- GB found a job! He is working at Blum, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland. He stopped working at Brown Brothers on a Thursday and started working at his new job the next Monday. It's a trip. His dad stopped paying him in March, and he had been collecting unemployment for the past couple of months. To say this has been stressful is an understatement. Finding a job was a giant step for GB and I know it is a huge relief that he has something. I have no words for all that he has gone through. He went from knowing he would have Brown Brothers for his whole life, and he could pass it down to Bash, to having all of that just disappear. He put himself out there and wrote a resume, went on interviews, did the whole thing. He makes me so proud.
And I think down the line, this job will be a good one. It is in a field he knows and loves, and he knows all the players in the Bay Area, especially since his brother is one of the big ones. His connections and introductions are reasons that a lot of people in the 420 game have made money over the last 20 years. And everyone loves GB. Right now, it is another change in his world because he is working 4 10 hour days, and not getting home until around 9 at night. He is learning all the parts of working there in the hopes that he will be a manager of one of the several places that are supposed to open in the next few months. They would be lucky to have him, if that all pans out.
I am a jerk, because for all the good that is going on, I just want my old life, before all this happened. I don't want to move. I don't want to not see my husband at night four days a week. I don't want to lose my backyard, or my jasmine vine, or my light or my rainbows. I just want to go back to before I knew that things were going to go this way. I wish I knew that last year was going to be my last Christmas in my house. I wish I had more dinner parties this last year, when we still had some money and GB was home at night. I thought the #9thStSocialClub was our past, present and future. I thought my future grand babies would sleep in Bash's room, under the moon and Peter, Wendy, John and Michael flying over their heads just like they have for the past 24 years.
And I know I am being dramatic, because we are all here, and it is not a death. People have suffered so much more than what we are going through. But I can't help but mourn the life we had and wish I had it still. My girl Emily from Our Town said it best-
I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. (she breaks down sobbing, she looks around) I didn't realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back.
We found a place to live! The address is the first thing that appealed to me, 2117 Alameda Ave. If you grew up in Alameda, you know Alameda Ave is a great little block, and I am stoked on the 2117 address, it seems symetrical and neat. I don't know if that makes sense, but the numbers "go together". It's a back house behind a large house with three or four units. It's light green-yellowish, which works for us too. There is a small yard that wraps around the house, mostly dirt but it could BE something. Two bedrooms, one little bathroom. It's smaller than our house now but it's a HOUSE. Not an apartment, or shared walls. And I know there are a million cute places like that, but it was going to be hard to get used to after only living in houses since I was like 9 and moved out of our apartment in NY. And even then, our only neighbor was the strip club downstairs. But anyway.
It's kind of little. And dark. All of the wood is dark, and the windows are smaller and there are not as many. And it makes me feel small, that I am even thinking of the negative things. I should be thrilled. We found a HOUSE. But I am not all the way, because I am clearly a small spoiled child who just wants to stay in MY house. I want my windows, and all my light. I don't even know if there will be a window for my prisms. I am nerd; I have had prisms hanging in my windows since I was in the 6th grade, and dancing rainbow light is just what I expect to have. What if there are no windows for the prisms, what if there are no rainbows? Why am I so lame that I demand rainbows? I know it's not reasonable. I know I should be thankful, and in so many ways I so am.
I am also very, very overwhelmed. I lived my life knowing I would be able to be in my house forever, and so have kept everything I have ever wanted to keep, even the stuff I probably should have gotten rid of, for 25 years. And I am the historian of our little world. I am the one who keeps all the pictures, those videos, that notebook we used to use to keep score for our Uno games, and also drew in and made jokes with. I keep all the treasures that kids make me. I keep t shirts with sentimental value. I am a softy who loves my things, and I keep them all, because I had the place to keep and store and hang on to. And now I don't, so where do I start? It's a rhetorical question, because I have already started, but the work I have done seems like the smallest amount compared with what is still ahead. I look at all the stuff and I am almost paralyzed with the work that needs to be done.
And then there's more news- GB found a job! He is working at Blum, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland. He stopped working at Brown Brothers on a Thursday and started working at his new job the next Monday. It's a trip. His dad stopped paying him in March, and he had been collecting unemployment for the past couple of months. To say this has been stressful is an understatement. Finding a job was a giant step for GB and I know it is a huge relief that he has something. I have no words for all that he has gone through. He went from knowing he would have Brown Brothers for his whole life, and he could pass it down to Bash, to having all of that just disappear. He put himself out there and wrote a resume, went on interviews, did the whole thing. He makes me so proud.
And I think down the line, this job will be a good one. It is in a field he knows and loves, and he knows all the players in the Bay Area, especially since his brother is one of the big ones. His connections and introductions are reasons that a lot of people in the 420 game have made money over the last 20 years. And everyone loves GB. Right now, it is another change in his world because he is working 4 10 hour days, and not getting home until around 9 at night. He is learning all the parts of working there in the hopes that he will be a manager of one of the several places that are supposed to open in the next few months. They would be lucky to have him, if that all pans out.
I am a jerk, because for all the good that is going on, I just want my old life, before all this happened. I don't want to move. I don't want to not see my husband at night four days a week. I don't want to lose my backyard, or my jasmine vine, or my light or my rainbows. I just want to go back to before I knew that things were going to go this way. I wish I knew that last year was going to be my last Christmas in my house. I wish I had more dinner parties this last year, when we still had some money and GB was home at night. I thought the #9thStSocialClub was our past, present and future. I thought my future grand babies would sleep in Bash's room, under the moon and Peter, Wendy, John and Michael flying over their heads just like they have for the past 24 years.
And I know I am being dramatic, because we are all here, and it is not a death. People have suffered so much more than what we are going through. But I can't help but mourn the life we had and wish I had it still. My girl Emily from Our Town said it best-
I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. (she breaks down sobbing, she looks around) I didn't realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back.
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