I’m in the titular porch swing. I was going to go to a thing tonight, but I have a headache from the pollen and dust and mold that’s swirling around me. I get a little achier over my left eye now than I used, right around where it smacked the pavement in January. My body holds on to everything now.
I’ve been sorting piles today, making some progress. There was a cartoon shared by the New Yorker, a woman handing a younger woman a piece of paper saying, “Now that you are older, I want you to have this to-do list that was given to me by my mom, which she got from her mom, still full of little tasks we all need you to do."
That hit hard. Here I am sorting through pictures and tchotchkes and memories, all of which have been handed down to me to take care of, some of which previous generations meant to deal with and didn’t.
Notes were left for me on a lot of the pictures, letting me know who people were. My Grandma, my Aunt Joan, my Mom. Sometimes they sat with me and told me about these pictures while they still could. I spent one afternoon with Grandma hearing stories as she pointed to faded black and white photos. This was her aunt who briefly dated William S. Hart, this is the uncle who was probably gay.
I have a zillion white porcelain things made by another aunt of my Grandma’s, Rose. They were made from kits, I believe. Bells and Santa faces for lapels, an entire sleigh with reindeer for display. Tastefully painted and personalized. The reindeer were dainty enough that some of their legs have snapped. It used to be my Grandfather’s job to glue them, then my Aunt’s, now it’s mine.
I’m not even planning to be home for Christmas this year. The kid and I want to do it in New York. Will I someday hand off the reindeer to her? Will she be gluing the legs? Does that chore end with me?
I was up in the Catskills last week at my friend Elizabeth Alice Murray’s house. Heading out of the city means seeing the occasional Trump sign as you drive along. One house even had a Trump/Pence sign, which means they are really deeply out of touch with reality.
It scared me. Driving through the mountains, I felt like I was in a movie flashback, surrounded by foreshadowing. It seems clueless to imagine the up-coming Christmas when I have no idea what the election will bring. Will I have fled the country by then? I won’t be bringing the reindeer with me if I do.
I know Elizabeth from when I lived in New York. We met over twenty years ago at the UU Church of All Souls on the Upper East Side. We fell out of touch, then got back in touch via Facebook. We’ve been through so much since we first met, things we couldn’t have imagined. Heartbreak, childbirth, head injuries.
Now she’s let me use her cabin for a week so I could write about my Mom. She has a cabin now. I’ve written a book. Life took its turns.
Life takes grim turns. Here I am dreading the horror that will come if Trump is re-elected, but one of the greatest horrors of my life, and Elizabeth’s, showed up with no warning on pleasantly warm, blue-skied day in September.
I don’t know how to plan for the future. I’ll glue the reindeer legs, sort the piles, try to decide what I don’t need anymore. My choices might be entirely wrong, but I’ve already experienced that. If I got rid of the reindeer altogether, who is there left to care? Thank you Rose for your work and love, but maybe we all need to move on now. The future is bearing down on us and we need to be nimble.