Thursday, August 9, 2001

Moving

So I guess by now Kathie has moved back to California from Albuquerque. She had called us a few weeks ago to catch up a bit and tell us that she was leaving the Southwest, she'd gotten a better job offer in Whittier. She'd only really moved there in the first place because Dad wanted to go there, he insisted actually. She felt bad about leaving and seemed afraid that we'd disapprove of the move; she felt like she was abandoning my dad there. Well, he is buried in the military cemetery there in Santa Fe, but good god, that doesn't mean she has to stay in the area just because he's there. We told her no guilt, to do what would make her happiest and to go on with her life.

It does bring up some old baggage, though. She must have gotten rid of the last of Dad's stuff. I mean, she had to move; all that unfathomable machinery and all the drawings and plans he carried around were bulky; she couldn't have kept all that. I sorted through what I could when we were back there when Dad died, but some of it I had no clue what it was or what to do with it. Other stuff I really couldn't use and god knows we have enough of our own packrat stuff already. So most of it I passed on, just tried to label things clearly to make it as easy for Kathie as possible.

In reality I was putting off facing what it all meant; on some level I knew I was passing on ever taking his things, but I chose in some region of my brain to think that I'd get back to it and deal with the stuff better later. All those unfinished projects he hauled around for years through all those moves. He kept drawings and car designs and airplane plans and tons of notebooks filled with unreadable notes, even his service records, but somehow all the detritus of the years when we kids were young was lost for good. All pictures gone, any tangible objects to show he had ever had a family at all. In the pain of his passing I chose to ignore the sting that there was nothing left behind to show he'd ever cared for us.

Why did he feel compelled to move so often? We left possessions behind with each move, pieces that wouldn't fit, stuff we didn't really need, little evidences of time spent in a place, all the threads that didn't manage to hold our family together. Why did we grow up thinking it was strange if you didn't have all your stuff packed in boxes? When I first discovered some people had lived in the same place _all_their_lives_ it totally boggled my mind. How could that be? The possibilities threw me for a loop; you could have friends you'd known since kindergarden. You could go to the same school for more than a year or so. You could feel comfortable in a place, feel you belonged somewhere. Weird. I was so jealous of those kids. I used to wish I had a different Dad, I used to walk down the various streets we lived on looking into other people's windows in the evening thinking they all looked like happy families, wondering what that would feel like.

Water under the bridge, of course. And really, I've been so incredibly lucky. I have one of those lit windows where the happy family lives. I feel like I belong where I am, in my own skin, finally. And I have too many of my own unfinished projects and drawings hanging around that somebody later will scratch their heads over and wonder "What am I going to do with this? Why the hell did she keep this? Why didn't she ever finish anything?" But you can bet I'm going to leave some tangible things behind that'lll tell my loved ones just how much they mean to me.

I just hope that the strange belongings we leave behind aren't the full measure of what we are. Odds are anybody following behind to clean up won't know what to do with them. Gotta go. I'm going to cuddle the boys and enjoy them.

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Previous journal entries:

6/25/2001: Sleeping through the night

6/21/2001: Why Website?