Feelings

I have always thought it funny how my brother and I are left handed and my 3 younger sisters are right handed and how different all of our handwriting is. Yet we all grew up in the same house with the same parents and for the most part had the same teachers but we all learned to write differently.

The same can be said for our feelings. We all had the same experiences together as kids but since we were of different ages and stages in our lives when they happened and we look at them differently. One thought that always comes to mind for me is when my youngest sister was born. I woke up that morning and saw on the changing table already set up in my bedroom that there was a box of baby announcements missing. So I got up all excited knowing that my mom had gone during the night to have the new baby girl. I was 7. My brother and sisters they woke up in their rooms and didn't know something was different until they got to the living room and our grandmother was there.

Last night my sister and I went to my mom's to get some things for another garage sale. When I got to my mom's house and walked in, the furniture was moved and the living room was not as I left it I got upset. Not because the things were moved or changed but because I didn't know it had been done. So it was a shock. But that shock unraveled into the feeling that this emotional roller coaster is so different for all of us and one point of view is the stuff has to go and the other is the touchy feely side that I feel.

Feelings a 1974 Morris Albert song. Wo-o-o, Feelings, Trying to forget my feelings of love.
I guess the emotional baggage I have carried my whole life, the very fiber that makes up me again is feeling discounted. That is the thing that is truly upsetting. The things that matter to me that don't matter to others. Which makes me feel like I don't matter. That is not a very nice feeling.

Since I like to know why, I looked up the definition of feelings. An emotional state or reaction. So I read that some neuroscience professor believes that feelings are the brain's way of interpreting and reacting to emotions. After I got home and cried for quite a while my sister called me and she said that this stuff upsets her to but she has to work and puts on her smile and moves on. Well I do to. I try really hard not to let the feelings stop me from living. I am not terminally sad but to some it may seem that way. Just at this time in my life my mortality and the fact that I never had any children and there will not be anyone that looks at my things with the memories I have for my mothers is what really is getting me down.

I watched a movie the other night under the recommendation of my favorite movie buff friend called "Hello my name is Doris". Well Doris and I have had some similar situations in our lives. The movie starts at her mother's funeral you know the one after she has taken care of her mom, her entire life. And her brother brings up the fact that now that mom has passed on Doris there is no need for you to keep that big house and all the stuff in it on Staten Island. They were still at the funeral. He sets her up with a life coach to help her and she goes to visit but isn't ready to part with her mother's things. But her brother seeing the money they could make off the house pushes for the sale. Pushes so much that he brings the life coach to the house one morning unannounced. Which totally devastates Doris. Now this reaction I know. My mother hated change so much when you changed anything for better or worse she hated it. I don't hate that there was a change. I just need to be for warned. Which I think is so that I can prepare myself for the feelings that I have in regards to the loss of my mother and that they are so different from others.

My brother has not been like her brother in the movie. My brother tried and wanted to keep the house. And we all were aware that the things in the house had to be thinned out even if one of us was going to live in the house. So, back to the movie. The part that really got me was when her brother brought the life coach over unannounced and the sister-in-law who has no regards for Doris's feelings just threw her hands up as though Doris is being selfish that this home that was hers not someone elses and she is not ready to change. After Doris throws a temper tantrum the sister-in-law leaves and the brother says, "Doris, I am very disappointed with you." And this is when I felt like Doris and I had a true connection. She says, "You are disappointed in me?" She had taken care of their mother her whole life. He lived his. He went to college and got married. She didn't and that makes her mad and sad. He doesn't knows the things she gave up to do what she felt was the right thing to do.

Well Doris she does clean out the house and sell it. And so are we. There are other parts to the movie but what I have mentioned was the parts I related to. Sally Field portrayed my feelings perfectly.

I will work on my knee jerk reaction that I don't matter to others. And I will try not to worry about life after I am gone.

Look around the Kitchen

I have been reading a book at night for the last month or so, called "The Big House" by George Howe Colt. About the summer house that had been in his family for generations and the last time back before they sell the house.

Well, ironically this summer I saw it on a table at Barnes & Noble and the picture on the cover made me cry. Not that it looked anything like the house I grew up in, but what memories that 100 year old house must hold. Tonight I read from a page saying how there are things setting places that basically because they were not moved they were left and became part of the house. A simple shell sat on the mantle was an example or even a book used in place of a caster missing from a piece of furniture. Once they are there they become familiar and they stay. Just that sort of thing was the old dining room table that we used as kids until the family out grew it and mom bought a new one on clearance at JCPenney. The old table didn't get sold or thrown out. It was moved to a place where it could be used when we had extra people over or a breakfast table on the enclosed back porch. But over the years mom would bring home little animal statues and and baskets and rocks got carried in or shells and they ended up on the table. It has been years since the table served food. The table has a whole new purpose. It was the place to drop your stuff when you came in the back door or the place the ash tray sat that mom used outside. The ashtray is an old black plastic ash tray that has a notch broke on it and she had asked me years ago to replace. I bought her two new ash trays. Don't know where they are but I guarantee they have never been used and the broken black ash tray continues to be used daily by my brother. See I understand the kind of nostalgia that causes that sort of thing to happen. Why use the new one the old one is working just fine. Same goes for just about everything I look at in her house.

I have written about sorting through things and laughing at things that we have found. I wish we could have done this while mom was alive. I wish she could have enjoyed the memories. But I know just like with me the memories are hard to part with. I know there are things that are gone that mom wouldn't have gotten rid of just because they had been there so long. And this is where I try to sit those things out and see them when I go in and out and to help me either remember the memory that goes with that thing or carry out the door and use it in my own house. Like I have said before I brought home a couple measuring cups. I got rid of my plastic ones and now I have to look to find the glass ones but I have used them and will continue to use them. I am going to do the same with some of the serving spoons mom had or a spatula. I know we have spoke of mom's love for measuring cups but I am pretty sure I never mentioned her love for early 20th century kitchen utensils.

Do you have a butter cutter? I know mom has at least two and one will be coming to my house. Do you have serving spoons with wooden handles or Bakelite handles? I bet I could find at least 3 meat grinders fully intact in the kitchen and at least that many rolling pins if they haven't already found their way to someones house. I could go on and on. Oh I know we just found them, nut crackers and picks. Mom had enough that everyone could have their own for when we had crab for dinner.
The drawer next to the stove is double the size of a normal kitchen drawer and it is so heavy you have to put your hip into it to get it to close and you have to shuffle things around to get them to settle back into place. Once the drawers were all full she took to buying plastic storage drawers which she had at least four on the counter holding the utensils that wouldn't fit in the drawer by the stove.

I would like to say those were the only unusual things in the kitchen but I did not mention the flowered wall paper on the ceiling that was there when we bought the house, Never came down because well it was there and we are all used to it after 40 years.

Will the next person say, "oh my god?"
Yes, and they can take the time to remove it. While they are in the kitchen they will probably want to remove the blue paint that is on the wall behind the refrigerator. When I was about 25 mom went away for Thanksgiving weekend and and the 5 of us decided we would surprise her remove the blue paint from the knotty pine cabinets and walls. Well this was more than a long weekend project but we did remove 80 percent of the blue paint but the remnants of that weekend are still on the wall. Mom was mad that we started, mad that it didn't get finished. Just plain mad. But it was one of those things she had talked about doing since we were kids.

Okay one last thing in the kitchen. The pictures on the refrigerator. I guess it kinda started with the grand kids, A picture of Timmy here a picture of Alex there. Oh every one's favorite Alex picture going down a slide at McKay Park on Mandalay, Smile as wide as the slide. Yellow side, blue shorts and shirt. See it is all here. Not the picture but the memory of it on the fridge. The funny thing is Alex always know as the Angel. Always reminded to keep her halo on straight. Mom would tell her things like that is okay to do with grandma but you really shouldn't talk like that to other people. Mom would spoil all of them bad but Alex she got a lot of mom's attention. So Alex would count how many pictures on the fridge were her versus her brother and when Emily, Ashley and Paul came along well it was an all out war. The kids would see whose picture got a prominent location on a refrigerator that was covered in photos. They would count how many on the front and how many on the side. I would be lucky to be in one family picture and one picture with me and Brian from New York.

Well, I am glad I could show you around the kitchen. And have preserved the memories for those that will come after me.

Pushing On

There is an old saying: somethings never change. But I have recently found the things you think will never change will. So it seems the sadness ebbs and flows and that doesn't end either, but I am learning to live with it. Today I took another step, I talked to someone about my mother's books. I have thus far not been willing to let others in to buy anything direct from my mother's house. My sisters have told me multiple times it would be easier but I feel as though it would not be easy for me. My sisters and brother have nudged me along to make progress and sometimes I have to step back and re-group because they are pushing on. I too will push on.

So if you have never been in my mother's house the bedroom my brother used as a kid became her tv room and library. One wall is floor to ceiling cook books and two other walls have book shelves that run the length of the walls about 3 feet high with books and in a couple places those book shelves are 2 deep not books but complete book shelves. Then there is her bedroom which has I think 6 book shelves that are 6 ft tall each again all books. And just for good measure she has one more shelf in the front hallway next to the front door full of children's books. So to say the least mom liked to read. We have already gotten rid of quite a few boxes of romance novels my grandma's favorite that mother would also read but her favorite was the westerns. Her Louis L'Amour books. At the end she gave away some of the Louis L'Amour books she wanted others to see the scenery she had scene through his words. Even I have one laying next to my bed and one of the girls that helped take care of mom carries one with her all the time. I hope mom has gotten to meet Louis L'Amour in heaven and she can hear the stories first hand now.

Back to the books. So I found a bookstore that when I walked through the front door of this old house I said to the man behind the desk. I think you are going to be able to help. He said, "with what?" I explained the situation and that his store looked like my mother's room that she spent most of her time. He was so kind and I finally said yes. That he could come and look at the books. He said he will bring everything he needs and for me to call next week so we can make arrangements for him to come over. I of course looked around and we spoke of books and he said my mother had been a good influence on me and my interest in history and books. And yes. I walked out with a book. A Marjorie Rawlings book South Moon Under.

Since I was already down in St. Pete I thought I might as well eat lunch at mom's favorite place down there. Fourth Street Shrimp Store another old Florida place. I had fried shrimp and fried clams. It was so good I brought another home for my brother, Al.

On the way back to her house I thought of what I need to do before someone can go through the books. I need to pick out a few that I want and then that moment of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of books. I know at one point she had counted and she had like 800 cookbooks. When I got to the house I stood and looked at the room and just couldn't even move. The first book I see and everyone else is one that the cover faces out, A Flower Grows in Ireland by Ron Wilson. I never knew why but it was the last book her sister Jan read before she died. She got it on her last trip to Ireland. I don't know if mom ever read the book but I know it is not being sold. It will find a place in my house. I only know this piece of information because about a year ago in preparation for mom going home from rehab my sister Beth helped me clean that room and when we straightened up the books that book was moved and mom had a fit as only she could have and the book was put back where it had been for well  more than 20 years and where it sits now because even knowing that I am going to take that book home I couldn't bring myself to remove it from the shelf.

So again, I went back to her bedroom to make sure the shelves back there were accessible and tried to figure out how to get more light back there so that the man from the bookstore can see what he he is looking at. But within the next few weeks the room that has been pretty much untouched will to be disassembled in the name of progress. It is the same feeling I felt when my sisters packed up some of the things from the living room for that my brother wants to keep. In my head it makes no sense not to touch the things that must be touched. I know I would rather do it myself than have someone else do it for me. As it was in the beginning I must make way for change and push on.