I moved to Boston in July 2004, which, at the time did not seem like a far away move from California. After all, my prior move was to Africa for 3 years. At least Boston was on the same continent, and still in the USA. No, not far at all.
Fast forward almost 10 years, 3 kids, a graduation, a career, and one house later.... that distance has become increasingly far, and harder to endure.... especially as the kids grow up. I had begun advising my mom to think about moving out here, but she would always throw me a vague answer of "sometime soon", most likely just to shut me up.
Well I almost dropped the phone in March when my mom phoned to tell me, "Lisa, guess what. I called the realtor". I couldn't believe it, I was totally shocked. Both Mike and I had already assumed she'd never come out here... too far... and she has too many years and memories in California. Not to mention it's a big job to clean out a house that you've been in for 40 years.
Anyway, I was barely over the shock of just hearing my mom had called the realtor, and then she proceeds to tell me that a couple have already come to see the house, twice, and they love it. To make a short story even shorter, she sold the house and will be on a flight to Boston June 10th!
I flew out to LA a few weekends ago to help her out on the moving process, but she has done an amazing job packing up so far. 40 years of collected stuff. I was pulling out boxes from cupboards of which I'd never even seen before. Unfolding and opening things I could not identify. My favorite "don't bring that" item came from one of my mom's Christmas boxes. Amongst other stuff I've never seen, there was a rug of some sort that had red felt edging (hence the Christmas box?). As I unfolded the 'rug'... I realized it was some sort of skin of an animal.
Now before I go on to describe the story that I received from my mom, I have to warn you that folks from the Alps of Switzerland often times (or used to) save the skins of animals to make rugs. I remember growing up and we'd take trips to Davos, and my Aunts houses would have rows of goat skulls and horns up and down the hallways and stairwells. Mainly things that were sport hunted. A few cow skins here and there. Well it turns out that my family was also into making rugs out of the family dogs once they passed away. A nice way to remember the family friend perhaps? So anyway, as it goes, I was holding the red felt fringed skin of Bella - the family dog when my mom was 10. As I held her fur up, my mom told me how Bella came to end up as a dog rug. She said when she was 10, the family had a house keeper who never liked Bella and always threatened to take her to the butcher. This was apparently because Bella kept having too many puppies. Then I got the side note story that the family always secretly thought this housekeeper, who came from Vienna, had the personality of a Nazi and had at some point worked in the prison/concentration camps during WW2. So the family goes away for a couple days on vacation, and when they got back, Bella had been 'taken care of' by the Nazi house keeper! So my Nana fired her, and went and had Bella immortalized in rug form. My mom tells me just wait for this summer, she'll have a chance to show us the Gino rug when we all visit Davos!
After realizing I was not much help with packing (she couldn't handle not knowing what was packed in which box-as if she'd even remember), I spent the rest of the weekend mostly on the phone trying to organize movers, moving dates, car moving dates, services to discontinue... etc. It was a bittersweet visit, and as much as I am happy that my mother will be so close to us, I am just as sad at the feeling of losing my childhood home. I haven't actually lived in that house for several years, but thinking of strangers living in it, trampling over all our memories, changing things from the way my mom had it. Taking away the dozens of garden gnomes that my mother has collected over the years....
-I'll miss my neighborhood so much, with all the families around us that I grew up with. I really have several families that helped raise me.
all my moms from Sheridan Rd.
-I'll miss the crazy cement mushroom outside the front of our house, so glad I snapped a picture of Vince and Zoë sitting on it the last time we were there.
Gina and I wanted one last picture on the mushroom. We used to sit together on the sidewalk into the long hours of warm summer nights, chatting about all the things we thought we knew about life...... sometimes interrupted by my Godfather Jim, who'd yell over at us asking if we were watching the side walk grow. Oh if that sidewalk could talk..... it would unlock all the secrets it has, and stories of how it watched all of us grow up.
Then we tried to get my mom to take a photo on the mushroom, but she did what she usually does for photos, grumbled about not wanting to be in it.... so I ended up snapping her picture just as she turned her back on our address inscribed mushroom, showing her just walking away. Sort of appropriate for my last visit to that house....while it's still hers.
So bring on the van full of fake plants, complete with inches thick dust from years of neglect, it's time for a new chapter of memories to begin... ones that my kids will be able to create and remember, with their grandma.
and a little tasty treat, everything was good again
