Susan Straight discusses restoring homes as an art form.

The great and funny Susan Straight, whose latest book is Between Here and Heaven, talks about home....in a new twist.

Mary Flood does it again: her poem "The Party's Over" will hit you right in the solar plexis! One of the Best of The Memoir Writing Conference 2012

The Party’s Over

By

Mary Flood

 

Sunday morning always meant mass

And breakfast after.

 

That cold Sunday morning our driveway was

Crowded with cars.

 

“A party,” my seven year old self thought.

We went to the front door like invited guests.

 

My mother and aunt greeted us.

“daddy went to heaven.”

 

I thought, “good for him.”

Wasn’t that what they told us in church?

 

“Live a good life so you can go to heaven.”

Daddy did that as well as he did everything else.

 

Why was everyone crying?

So many grown ups with tears on their cheeks.

 

I squeezed out a tear or two myself

Although I wasn’t really sure why.

 

And though I didn’t know it then,

The party was over.

 

Copyright 2012© Mary Flood

Peggy Fagan's "Packing" is a beautiful meditation on the bittersweet chore of dismantling your childhood house. One of the Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012.

Packing

By

Peggy Fagan

 

 It is a long lonely process, dismantling all of the stuff of one's youth, the dusty old toys, the moth-eaten books, the 'Game of Life' well used, played constantly, giving us no idea that life is not a game, but a long hard road with very few shortcuts to happiness. My father's house is a house of memories, some good, more not so good. Getting him packed up and moved from here seems like the right thing to do, but the cost is high. The unpleasant echoes of violent arguments heard through sheet-rock walls still frighten me, along with the ghostly clinking of ice in a glass in a darkened room at night, forcing one to tiptoe past the door in the hopes of not being observed. I can hear weeping, and I don't know whose it is, mine or Mom's. Her life of sadness and disappointment saturate these walls, the air is thick with despair and I find it hard to breathe. This packing must be done, and so we forge ahead.

       The always-creepy basement is full of ghosts. My friend Joanie in her sleeping bag, shivering while Pat told those scary stories about men with hooks for hands and monsters lurking outside waiting maim and kill small children and teenagers in the most horrific manner. Those stories caused a fear of the dark that has stayed with me for over 40 years. I run up the basement stairs still feeling that tingling between my shoulder blades, still.

The old pool table stands forlorn, pockets empty, cue sticks tip-less, chalk useless. The bar, so cool with it’s own sink and Naugahyde covered swiveling bar stools where we would spin ourselves far out into another galaxy...close our eyes and spin, faster and faster until once stopped, the world revolved around the us, the spinners, our disorientation and escape complete, if only for a few moments.

        Everything seems so small, so much smaller than my memory recalls. Nannie's china chest, filled with irresistible, untouchable trinkets: now the doors are open wide. Dad’s scary table saw that sounded late at night: that night when hollering woke me to the blood stains that trailed down the hallway as a neighbor tried to wipe them up. Daddy had an accident, it's okay, go back to bed. OK.

      The rest of the house filled with treasures gathered from far away places. A few of them will go to new homes, cherished family heirlooms. But what of the rest of the items so lovingly collected and displayed? How does one get rid of things that were bought for their beauty or novelty, the buyer on a gleeful holiday free of any inkling of what the future holds? These items now sit on the dining room table, next to the breakfront filled with the precious china and leaded crystal goblets that made the table at the holidays so beautiful and festive. It is hard to look at these things and not think about how much they were loved, how dear they were, how much pleasure they brought to the one gazing through the glass. But there is so much collected in a large house where seven people lived their lives, lives truly of ‘quiet desperation'. Who wants all of these things? What do they all mean? After all, they are just things. But they meant something to the one who brought them home and they feel important in someway. Maybe it is the memories stored away family visits. Those memories remain after the things are gone but are somehow diminished when these things are treated as if they have no value.

     The attic is a magpie's nest of cards and letters and photos saved over the course of almost 60 years. Tiny bridal shower cards, with Mom's dearly familiar handwriting on the back detailing the gift that came with them, wedding cards with sweet little flowers and glitter, baby showers, birth announcements, kindergarten graduation certificates, the beginnings of a family and a life with all of the hopes and dreams that accompany young love. All of it saved in an attic that suffered invasions by rapacious raccoons, squirrels and other chewing critters that ate their way through most of that hope and left the remains piled in the corners. All of those things so lovingly saved, so precious, so ruined, meaning nothing to the one who was left behind. The sadness of sweeping up and throwing away these things is overwhelming, the resharpened feeling of loss and heartache cutting back through to the surface. Tears leave wet tracks down my cheeks    

       There is one box, untouched by the marauders, just a shoe box, just a treasure chest of photos of childhood friends, of letters written by young friends long forgotten, letters from the once cherished, now estranged sister, from beloved grandparents written in that fractured English that 50 years of living in America could not fix. Pages of bad poetry, reading of longing and loss wishes unfulfilled, pages of teen-aged angst that still feels all too familiar.

     There is more, much more before this project of packaging up 50 years of life will be complete. There is no escaping the memories, they are there in every item picked up and wrapped : sometimes they slip in, causing a rueful smile, other times they are like a sucker punch to the midsection, leaving a weeping wreck in their wake. But this job must be done; this move must be made in this life, so close to over. It is a long process, sad and hard, with few light moments in between.

     New memories are made every day and gradually replace the melancholy of the old, my life is truly happier now; the good finally outweighs the bad. When this project is complete, and the move to a new life is made, my father will settle in his new chair in front of his beloved television, clinking glass in hand, with the few chosen mementos carefully placed around him. And for him the old memories will slowly fade into the background.

     Hopefully for me, what remains of the past will lose its sting of sadness and I will finally come to an accommodation with my past, with my losses, and I will put the memories away in a quiet place, to trouble me no more. I can only hope.

 

Copyright 2012© Peggy Fagan