estate sale
today was the last day i will ever be in my grandparent’s house.
oceans of my best, warmest, & safest childhood memories are scattered in that house. the sun sets on them tonight; dust is floating around in the reverberation of arguments & laughter, sobs & sighs, ready to resettle into the nooks & curves they fled from after nearly 3 weeks of vigorous cleaning.
there isn’t much left after divisions (& revisions of divisions) for my memories to cling to, but at the same time there’s so, so much:
decades of jewelry worth no more than fistfuls of change, rosaries holding legions of prayers lay neatly in drawers that’ll be gutted & refurbished by some creatively juiced DIY’er.
lawn equipment pa taught me to use when i was old enough to start making some “real cash,” buttons & beads & other remnants of craft days with nana. a myriad of crochet hooks worn to fit the crooks of her hand.
shelves of ceramics wait in the basement depths: fresh now & shining, pining for new, permanent perches, & a glass collection that was nana’s hyperfixation sits quietly in the family room we packed ourselves in for holidays, stoic & beautiful.
coats that witnessed winters harder than we’ll ever see again, & garden tools pa put to work making sure his yard was nirvana for every bird, squirrel, & chipmunk on the block.
the crowds will swarm soon & disrupt the slumber of semi-satisfied dust & memory, jostling them & yanking them from dreams where they finally reconciled, with careless & impatient hands.
& at the most pivotal moment, of course, always: what were the secrets tucked in the corners of pa’s smile? how did nana handle the burden of empathy?
the gnawing chatter about prices, the cries of excited unearthing, & the murmurs of mockery make it impossible to fall back asleep. or even rest.
if you take me, my brother, our nest of 8 cousins, & our mothers (whose collective brain-reels could have all of ours hog-tied in mere, visceral seconds) it isn’t ghosts you should worry about when you gleefully go home with your newfound trinket or project or tool or gift,
it’s us.
— 3.2024
