This Place

At Home

Funny to look around this big gray house and see these collections of things found and gathered over time. These things that are our lives.

Some, randomly placed, and others, in an order that changes each time the light comes through the window and whispers, “No, not there…”

 I am always trying to remember where things go.

Each time I walk into a room it’s as if I had never been there before.

I am surprised by what catches my eye; Red glass, orange throw, the contrast of what is soft and the surfaces that I can run my fingers along smoothly, or tattered rattan, wood

Already gathering dust

However fine.

The books that I can’t let go, the order, vague; Poetry, religion, all things real, biography, text books that my daughters and I hoped to return to, eventually. Every now and then a gingko leaf falls from the pages of a poetry book and I look for the page that it stained as if some clue is held there about where I came from or where I should go.

It’s all reference for times and places we moved through. The photographs are stacked with stories, the most important ones prominent, the others in a plastic bin in our attic, waiting for their chance to be a part of the conversation or to be just a collection of frames that I slide pictures in and out of, surprised by what was behind the most recent one. Sometimes they  serve to hold the new picture closer to the glass that is crusted with years of dust and fingerprints.

It pleases me to say that each thing in this house has a story. The moves have been so frequent that we could only hold on to what was important. It’s all important we agree as we continue to unpack the boxes that have been used so many times that their labels have nothing to do with their contents. The holes on each side are so soft that the edges of them curl inside my fingers.