house as spouse

This Tudor was built in 1929. The original eighty-year-old knotty mahogany door still guards the entrance and sometimes it's hard to even get it to open.

There is only one remaining intact area: my bedroom. It’s not the same: no longer feels like my home. Eighteen months and counting. Looks more like a warehouse of some kind. Boxes line the walls. They are not large boxes no forklifts are needed, just a few hefty guys. Chinese chairs, which were antiques 45 years ago, are wrapped in old sheets and tightly held by wide duck tape. They await the mover’s thick grey quilts. My beautiful oriental rugs are long gone. Rolled into totems resting in the corners of this exotic storehouse. Bare wood floors make the footsteps of my slight frame echo like a careless thief at night.

Only the largest paintings remain hanging-they will be packed at the last moment. Whenever that moment comes. There were so many near misses-near imminent sales, things sort of got packed, and then more things got packed in spurts. One of the two cash deals had me hurriedly packing my clothing in space bags. I felt like an executioner each time I sucked the air out of the plastic parcels rendering cloths, pillows, shawls, duvets, and jackets limp and melting their colors into Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I like the feel of them –they are hard little mounds. If you step away and take a glimpse, they look like miniature replicas of foreign terrains. Pathetic that I have a sense of accomplishment because the space bags worked as promised.

My real estate agent and I sat on the patio on a warm day last April. I was faithfully polishing furniture then and the hand carved Tibetan musicians still hung on the wall: a celestial orchestra that only God’s special creatures could hear. “I don’t feel you here anymore.” She said. I looked at her and smiled sadly. I knew what she meant. I had hoped to serenely leave the house but with at least some pangs of sorrow. That was nine months ago.

I sat down and wrote a letter of appreciation to the house. I thanked it for its solace and strength against the wind, rain and snow. I asked it’s forgiveness for my mismanagement of repairs. I asked it to let me go in peace, release me so another could revive it, live in it and again fill it with happiness.

I am now a mere boarder waiting for somebody-anybody to give me the ticket to move on. It’s like standing on an abandoned train platform waiting for a phantom train to come. The trains come full of promise, stop, then leave me abandoned. This is the twilight zone.

I had packed my books: left just a bunch without which I knew would be inconsolable if not within reach. Besides my bedroom, they are the only semblance of normalcy in this house. Even the linen closet was packed. At present, the same two sets of sheets are repeatedly used.

Life is stagnant. At times I realize that I am not breathing. The master bedroom is now the main abode for the cats and me. Nothing has changed in here. It is a desperate effort to pretend that I am living a normal life. The cats have many spots throughout the house that they commandeered through the years. Apart from an occasional swipe at a plastic flower that I dangle in front of her, the girl cat and her brother are inert. Now they lay at the foot of the bed as though they had been subjected to premature taxidermy.

I once had a penchant for luggage. I’ve done a good deal of traveling but no one needs that many luggage sets. The large ones stand hither and thither throughout the living and dining rooms, short, bulging polyester replicas of Stonehenge. They speak of my own enchanted past: the rituals into altered states, candles and humming bowls, and whispers emanating from the shadows cast on the stark white walls. They are like time machines. Lugging them, I crawled into different times and far off places leaving this house –always returning, it’s faithful spouse.

A spiritualist came in to cleanse the house and release any blocks to its sale. “This house is clean.” he joked. “If this doesn’t work use dynamite!” I smiled and felt my head shake imperceptibly, even he doesn't understand, I thought.

The stone foundation of the fireplace holds pieces of coral plucked by my stepfather from the bottom of the Aegean Sea, carefully-albeit illegally brought here from his native Greece sixty years ago. One of the few remaining pieces that adorn the wall is an ornately framed gold- thread Buddhist altar cloth. The cloth was a gift from a loved one way back from my ardent Zen days.

The couches are just sitting there covered with clothe that is stapled to the bottom strapping’s. A bunch of other stuff is strewn over them: photo albums, hand laundered Belgian lace table clothes , silk flowers, bubble wrap, two large porcelain bowls sans any protection-their real protection being their visibility, throw pillows that escaped the last space bag, a silver evening bag that a friend returned to me a few weeks ago.

It is cold out-feels like a meat locker in here. No matter how high up I put the heat it seems to disappear. No carpets or drapery to keep in the heat. As soon as the coziness permeates my body, I feel an icy chill. Where has the warmth gone? From where comes the frosty draft? It happens in any room I enter.

Leaving this house will now be easy after all of this trauma. That is, if it ever lets me go.