It is hard to know what to keep and what to throw away when you downsize from 1400 square feet to merely two hundred.
For many people, a house which is two and a half bedrooms with one and a half bathrooms and a partially finished basement seems small. To me, the home in which I raised my son felt like a cozy palace. We had enough room, most years, though I went through two marriages and two divorces in that time, so several years saw us consolidating closets to make room for step-fathers and the belongings that came with them.
When everyone had left, and I walked the old floorboards alone, I marveled at the clutter which remained. A mixture of my life and my son’s childhood filled every shelf and drawer. As the time to sell neared, I panicked and started throwing things into garbage bags to haul to the curb. Every person that volunteered a few hours of help left with a gift. I got rid of rocking chairs and televisions that way. I gave my son’s globe to the electrician’s child, which I later came to regret. Boxes of books went to the public library’s fundraising sale. I can admit, with the distance created by the intervening years, that my old secretary might still have a box of trinkets in her basement that I asked her to hold for me.
Here in California, small cubbies hold sundry mementos with which I cannot yet bear to part. I touch them with a tender hand from time to time. Tonight, the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I pulled on the brass knob of a tiny drawer and extracted a small plastic egg from its back recesses. I ran my finger along the red lines of design which my little boy so carefully applied.
I do not celebrate this holiday in its religious sense. I have not for many years. Now that I have been living alone more than two thousand miles from family, I won’t have freshly baked reindling and rich schmarren. In fact, I will be working all day, in the small shop that I founded in the town which lends its name to my rural address.
Children might wander into the place. They will read books and play with the toys in our small kids’ zone while their parents study the art on our walls. Most of the adults will wear finery and mention having had brunch at the Ryde hotel. They will ask to set their coffees on my counter while they consider the sterling silver earrings, and I will answer that they certainly may. Several will make purchases. I will photograph them, smiling, holding framed prints or new cotton hats with their children clinging to their skirts and the hems of their jackets.
At five o’clock, I will take in the signs and shut off the lights. I will drive my old car between the vineyards over the levee roads to my tiny house, with its crowded shelves and the ghosts lingering on the dusty sills. No one will have given me flowers. My son most likely will have called, and maybe my sister. Before I finish the day, I will water the cactus on my porch and take the kitchen trash to the dumpster. I will give the little egg one last glance before slipping it back into the drawer, where I expect it will stay for another year.
As the sun sets, I will gaze into the eyes of my little boy, eternally studying me from a faded photograph, taken on Easter, in Kansas City, when he was very young.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
The Missouri Mugwump®
