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It\u2019s a warm, postcard-pretty afternoon here in Culver City and I am guarding my parent\u2019s home. I\u2019m sitting on the edge of a rented white couch, hunched over my computer. The sofa, with its array of white and blue throw pillows, looks better than it feels. A big black table has become my temporary workspace. I share it with an assortment of \u201ccoffee table books\u201d arranged just so. Just SO the colors pop. Ersatz curtains frame the big picture windows and generic paintings, the kind of fluff you see in a doctor\u2019s office, decorate the walls.<\/p>\n
This house is \u201cstaged\u201d to sell. We want to get it on the market. Yesterday. Before the flying saucers land in Omaha, before the stock market crashes, before something terrible happens in the world or in Congress or at Burger King. So I have been living my own episode of Flip this House. Minus the cameras and commercials.<\/p>\n
My mother passed away July 4th. Independence Day. There is enough irony in that to keep the generators running. Suddenly I am faced with the one thing I have been dreading for years. Cleaning out my parent\u2019s home. Perhaps it is intrinsic to that generation\u2014the ones who lived through The Great Depression, a world war\u2014that they don\u2019t throw their stuff away. Did they think the whole mess of it would suddenly vaporize? Abracadabra! Well let me tell you about magic. There is no magic.<\/p>\n
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Before me is the story\u2026 The story of two lives stuffed into boxes and files and Hefty bags. The story behind thousands of black and white pictures that have lain dormant in a musty black trunk. I look at each photograph one by one. \u201cWho the hell are you?\u201d I ask over and over. Out loud. No year. No name. No nothing written on the back.<\/p>\n
A few days later I am leaning against the wall in my daddy\u2019s den, a room that hasn\u2019t been cleaned since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. My jeans are coated with a thick layer of soot and dust. I\u2019m reading my father\u2019s love letters to my mother. He wrote them on a typewriter. Besotted, he was. He saved caches of greeting cards from my mother too, where she added flirty missives and lots of curly X\u2019s and O\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Oh those kids\u2026<\/p>\n But I know how things ended. And they did not end well.<\/p>\n My father died 20 years ago and my mother kept his ashes in a purple-velvet bag on his desk. Once in a while she\u2019d venture downstairs to his office, his bunker<\/em> during marital wartime. There she is, my mother, standing akimbo at the door, hurling expletives at the purple bag. \u201cYou son-of-a-bitch-motherf…ker.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to find the right greeting card for marriages like this. Something like: Call a truce, would ya? It\u2019s your freaking anniversary. And have a nice day.<\/em><\/p>\n So back at the spiffed-up house, I am watching paint dry. Literally. The last thing on the \u201cto do\u201d list is to paint the front door. It has to remain open<\/em> for a few hours and I\u2019m channeling my inner German Shepard, sitting sentry even as I feel the memories within these walls begin to unfurl into the soft cushion of time.<\/p>\n \u00a0POSTSCRIPT —\u00a0THAT WAS THEN…THIS IS NOW<\/strong><\/p>\n It took three months to clear out my parent\u2019s home. Their essence faded away with each new coat of paint. Our real estate team, a mother-daughter (oh the irony\u2026) helped at every turn with precise explanations, reassuring late night calls, hand holding and hugs. The house sold in less than two weeks, just before the election, and now a new family is writing their own story inside those walls.<\/p>\n It\u2019s taken me this long to feel grounded again–in my body and in my life. From last summer, through fall, winter, into spring, it felt like my mental spark plugs were covered with gunk. Sludge. Goo. I transposed numbers, forgot people\u2019s names, asked the guy at the grocery store where the garbanzo beans are…as I\u2019m standing right in front of the garbanzo beans, and I made so many mistakes in my classes and at my gigs that it was no longer charming. In other words, life throws you for a loop. And you whirl.<\/p>\n Until you don\u2019t. A few mornings a week I drag my butt out of bed and do a brisk walk. You know, that cardio crap. I trot right by THE house. I thought for sure this would churn up the woe-is-me<\/em> stuff. But that hasn\u2019t happened. My mother kept the shutters closed. Now I see sunlight splashing through the windows. It looks like a home that\u2019s breathing. Again. And this makes me happy.<\/p>\n My mother and father did the best they could and I love them. I\u2019m grateful that they got me here. But I arrived in their<\/em> world. My mother’s mental illness is old. My great-grandmother had it and maybe many before her. My father was brought up by a single mother and an abusive alcoholic stepfather. \u00a0What did my parents know about\u00a0a\u00a0loving marriage that endures through the seasons of life?<\/p>\n Think of all the baggage that gets \u201chanded down\u201d to us through the generations. Sometimes we take it on\u2014someone else\u2019s burden\u2014and make it our own. \u00a0And pass it along.<\/p>\n Or not.<\/p>\n But this morning something wonderful happened to me. \u00a0 I woke up.<\/p>\n I played music and talked to strangers in line at Costco, answered a few emails and wished a couple Facebook \u201cfriends\u201d Happy Birthday\u00a0<\/em>even though I will never meet them in person. I got to say \u201chi ya\u201d to my next-door neighbor and watch some amorous squirrels chase each other around the Eucalyptus trees that lean into our balcony. I got to look up\u2026at the sky\u2026and feel the warm breeze whoosh across my face. I ate something delicious with potatoes in it and enjoyed a yummy cup of Bengal Spice herbal tea. I got to hug somebody and somebody hugged me back.<\/p>\n My husband and I have a regular date after dinner. We watch Jeopardy. And we tell each other, out loud, how grateful we are for our sweet life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a warm, postcard-pretty afternoon here in Culver City and I am guarding my parent\u2019s home. I\u2019m sitting on the edge of a rented white couch, hunched over my computer. The sofa, with its array of white and blue throw pillows, looks better than it feels. A big black table has become my temporary workspace. I share it with an assortment of \u201ccoffee table books\u201d arranged just so. Just SO the colors pop. Ersatz curtains frame the big picture windows … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[142,140,138,141],"class_list":["post-1879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogentry","tag-cleaning-out-parents-home","tag-difficult-marriage","tag-hoarding","tag-moving-on-in-life"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":2,"label":"blog entry"}],"post_tag":[{"value":142,"label":"cleaning out parent's home"},{"value":140,"label":"difficult marriage"},{"value":138,"label":"hoarding"},{"value":141,"label":"moving on in life"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/5010-painting_the_door.jpg",480,640,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Cali Rose","author_link":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/author\/crbauthor\/"},"comment_info":3,"category_info":[{"term_id":2,"name":"blog entry","slug":"blogentry","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":138,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":2,"category_count":138,"category_description":"","cat_name":"blog entry","category_nicename":"blogentry","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":142,"name":"cleaning out parent's home","slug":"cleaning-out-parents-home","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":142,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":140,"name":"difficult marriage","slug":"difficult-marriage","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":140,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":138,"name":"hoarding","slug":"hoarding","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":138,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":3,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":141,"name":"moving on in life","slug":"moving-on-in-life","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":141,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1879"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3194,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879\/revisions\/3194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/5010-so-in-love-698x1024.jpg\")
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