Odds and Ends (and Lew)

I admit to being a bit loose at the tether today. I went yesterday afternoon to my father’s house to help him pack up the last bits and pieces of the home he shared with my mother for 20+ years. It is a beautiful house, filled with unexpected touches that added deeply to the richness of their home. It is a place that guests wanted to linger, to secret themselves into closets so as to remain after the party has ended because the house itself was sort of an event. Dad designed it long distance when they lived in Tokyo and he sourced the materials and builder to be ready to roll when they moved back to this small island that we have called home for 58 of my now 60 years.

Over the last few months my father has been sorting through the detritus of 80 years, finding journals from his mother, photos and slides from the turn of last century, petrified gumdrops, endless rubber bands and deeds to the houses they’ve lived in. Some of this treasure has made it to my house, antique boxes that were my mother’s delight, rugs and her mother’s china, paintings and etchings that I have carried in my heart from childhood now hang on my walls or lean against chairs waiting for their spot that’s ‘just so’. I have found this cathartic as I have climbed into my cupboards, culled objects that have less meaning for me to replace them with these well loved old friends.

These pieces are but a few of the ones whose address has changed to mine. Odds and ends to be sure, but this end of a chapter, like my father, I have embraced. Lew could sense that my emotions were close to the surface and stayed within a foot of me throughout this process. Such a love. He is so good to me.

I am woefully behind with your journals and feel poorer as a result. I will catch up this week and am looking forward to seeing what you have all been up to. Several new children have been added to my classes and mountains of paperwork, both to read and to write, always precedes their arrival. And the supervisor evaluation continues, good heavens! But the next installment of my grandfather’s story will be soon coming. I hope you will not give up on me!