Living with Boxes This is the first time, since my blog began in 2010 that I’ve missed a blog day. It’s been Monday and Thursday every week wherever I was. This has been a crazy week. We “moved” on Wednesday, me in the car with Buddy and boxes, and Dave in a U Haul truck. This is phase one. Phase two, after the house is sold, the big stuff that needs to stay in the house for now, will come in a moving van. We planned to stay in the new old house, but filled with tools, sawdust, the smell of paint, work men and no water, the house wasn’t ready for us. Our air bnb friend was full, so we drove 2 hours farther and spent the night with our daughter in Oriental. They’ve just moved there recently and she is also unpacking boxes! We were back at the new old house Thursday, back to Oriental for the night, and back here again today. We have water, boxes, minimal furniture, paper plates, tp, and light bulbs. And, as you can see, our internet has been installed. The work that’s been done is beautiful. Everyone has worked so hard, Dawson gave them all the day off to have a nice Easter weekend with their families, and he’s headed for the beach to relax. The interior is painted, the exterior aluminum siding is off so we must decide on a new color for our new old yellow house. It will be something approved by the Historical Society, and I’ll give Dawson the final word. He hasn’t made a mistake so far, and his attention to detail is amazing.
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Tour in a Box While emptying the attic in preparation for our move, we’ve emptied boxes and leafed through years of mementos before tossing them into the trash. Football mums and prom corsages wrapped in cellophane, as if they were the most precious museum articles. Newspaper pictures and articles, awards, certificates, and report cards, we enjoyed, then discarded, along with wedding invitations, death notices, and thank you letters from school children and Scout parents. Some things that at one time were so important to us they were pressed between scrapbook pages, we couldn’t recall seeing before. Then I found the Tour-in-a-Box.
There was a time when our last child was out of the house and Dave was still working. I travelled with him a lot during those years. At that time, we had five young school-age grandchildren. Whenever we took a nice trip – Costa Rica, Ireland, Rome, Fatima – rather than purchasing everyone t-shirts or toys, I made them each a gift called Tour in a Box. First, I wrote the story of the trip. I showed the map and how we got there. I told them something special about each day, things I learned, saw, or did that were unique in games, puzzles and pictures. As the story progressed, it would say, Now open surprise package # 1, or #5, whatever. Each box had about ten little surprise packages containing a shell from the beach, or maybe some ‘foreign’ money, something they’d not seen before; from Hawaii, little containers of different colored sand, and volcanic rock. From Costa Rica, a chunk of sugar cane was the surprise that went with telling about the sugar cane. Mostly the little packages were things I picked up. I created colorful covers, and using the plastic coil binder, the story pages became a book. I packed each collection in a box and mailed it to them. I guess these were really the first books I wrote! In recent years, my oldest daughter, whose two sons received several Tour-in-a-Box from Grandma, and are now both married, was doing what I’m doing now, packing and discarding to relocate. She came upon the boxes in the boys’ empty closets. She thought I might like to have them, so she put them in my attic! I enjoyed seeing them again and have picked out a few things I think a young granddaughter would like to see. She wasn’t born at the time and now is a very inquisitive learner who likes rocks and fossils, and all things new to her. She’ll be receiving First Eucharist next month, so she might like to see the Fatima and Rome stories. I think I might save the bound books, but it’s probably time to let the little surprises go. Their shelf life has expired. Memories that Don’t Fit in Boxes If you’ve been following my blogs for the past month, you realize my husband and I are moving. We are doing what countless others have done: downsizing. That means our lives have changed significantly enough that our current home is no longer suitable.
I’ve written about the experience of selecting the new old home that I didn’t really want, the exciting adventure of restoration, and a lot about our new old town of Edenton. The new old house is a mess right now with different restoration work, cabinetry and carpentry, plastering and painting. Library shelves are being readied for family pictures and our beloved books. And I really do love it now. But here in my mountain house, another part of the downsizing activity continues. We are, of course, trying to sell our beautiful log home, and keep it staged and realtor-ready all the time, while wrapping possessions and packing them in moving boxes. It’s a difficult task. Not the wrapping, or the packing, but deciding what to wrap, pack, and move. What do we have that we no longer need, enjoy, or want? What do we have that will or won’t work in the new old house? Because we moved every two years for twenty years, I was never in the habit of collecting or hoarding. I culled possessions regularly; we kept only what we needed, used, and enjoyed. The one exception was photographs. They moved every time. In addition to family albums of our family 1962-1999, I have twelve large albums of Girl Scouts, first grade through twelfth. I have special albums of trips to Europe, carousels of slides and 8mm movies that have no projectors and have laid in the attic for twenty years collecting dust. Our family has grown in the last twenty years, and we’ve added wedding pictures, baby pictures, and graduation pictures. I added my parents’ photo albums during this time, as well. It’s time to cull. Today I sent messages to several former Girl Scouts, alums from my troop, and asked them to pass it on to those I’ve lost contact with, asking if they’d like any of their pictures. It’s going to be time-consuming, but I know I will enjoy every moment of looking at them again, remembering the good times we had. And as they reply, learning about their lives and where they are today. I keep memories in boxes, a cedar chest, in trinket boxes, and photo albums. But the best of all are the ones in my heart, mind, and soul. They don’t fit in the packing boxes, but they will move with us anyway. Where do you keep your memories? Do you organize your photos, or stash in a box? I think today’s young parents keep them on their iphones! The amazing thing about special photos is that you don’t ever un-see them. The photo itself becomes the memory, to have and cherish. Is Anything Really New? I've heard the Sage comment that nothing is ever really new. And I'm beginning to believe that's historically true. M
My friend Anne, a historian in Edenton, has a great collection of old newspapers that are an amazing and entertaining perusal. I'm captivated by an 1895 Harper's Weekly. The hand-drawn covers and cartoons rival any photograph or modern cartoon. I read news stories about how the trolley above Niagara Falls was accomplished and the handing over of Mackinac Island from the government to Michigan to create a State Park. I also enjoyed a serialized story titled "His Father's Son" by Branden Matthews. The author set the scene in an elegant Victorian mansion with broad hall and velvet draperies. Then, this: Then she led the girl into the large, long parlor with its four tall windows- two on the square and two on the side street-and with its wide fireplace, wherein there blazed a gas imitation of crackling log. 1895. Yes, gas log. And we thought we were so clever. Then came this: The next morning when this appeared the Gotham Gazette sent a reporter down to Broad Street to interview Ezra Pierce, with a hope that he would deny the report, thus permitting the Gazette virtually to denounce Dial News for its "fake journalism." Yes, the quotation marks were there. To those who think this a 21st century invention, sorry. It's already been done. In Murfreesboro, NC, there's the Jeffcoat Museum. I've blogged about this adventure before. If you want to see just how old our new stuff is, you must visit here. You'll see how our modern day toaster is merely another version of the one the soldiers in the Revolutionary War invented to warm their bread. Nothing is really new, it seems. Reading Aloud and Laughing Out Loud I enjoy reading to the residents at Fidelia Eckerd Living Center on Tuesday mornings. I only read an hour and often at the end of the hour only one or two still have their eyes open. Sometimes a resident will just up and leave with their walker or wheelchair, to go to the bathroom and forget to return, or just leave to go somewhere different. But there are a few who stick out the hour, laugh at the appropriate time, or make an inappropriate comment whenever. It’s always a different experience. But because they seem so happy to see me, and gather with enthusiasm, I think they enjoy our story hour.
I think their favorite part of the hour is having Buddy in their midst. He’s wandering around in the library when they arrive. Each one thinks he came to see them and each one gives him a warm welcome. He lays his head on laps and stands still between immobile legs to be petted. As the story commences he lays himself down on the floor in front of me where everyone can see him. Since I speak through a microphone, I’m not sure how anyone including Buddy, can fall asleep. The nurses have commented to me that many of them aren’t really sleeping. They are listening to the story with their eyes closed, relaxed by the tone of my voice, and the nearness of their friends. I’ve read a lot of different things for them. A few weeks ago, I tried some Bill Cosby and Erma Bombeck. They laughed and guffawed and remembered things from raising their families. We didn’t get too far in the books, but they enjoyed hearing about chocolate cake for breakfast and potato salad at the funerals and frozen diapers on the clothes line. We laughed a lot and reminisced. These are folks from my parents’ generation, and only one generation removed from me. We remember a lot of the same things. I love to see my mother laugh. She isn’t laughing at the story because she doesn’t hear it. She’s laughing because her friends are laughing out loud at something and she thinks they’re funny. I think she knows I’m reading aloud. She read aloud for years. I loved the sound of her voice reading to us. And we laughed out loud and probably made inappropriate comments, too. It’s not so much the story. It’s not the content that matters. It’s the time spent together, listening, laughing, and being. That’s what matters. Reading aloud to the family can never be replaced with electronic games or tv sitcoms and chaotic reality shows. Listening, even with closed eyes, engages every sense and energizes the imagination. It is relaxing; it’s never a waste of time. It’s a valuable gift. Sunrise, Sunset In the last few weeks several of my fb friends have posted pictures of nostalgic moments with children and grandchildren who suddenly, before they knew it, grew up and out of childhood. When did that happen? Like Golde and Tevye, we ask: Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older; when did they? Sunrise, sunset; sunrise, sunset; swiftly fly the years. One season following another, laden with happiness and tears. Sunrise, sunset…
I think the prettiest sunrise and sunset displays are here on the East Coast. The most consistently spectacular are on the coast of South Carolina. Beaufort even has a Facebook page where they post pictures of their daily sunrises. One must be up pretty early to catch the sunrise over there, before the day swiftly flows by! It’s so impressive and majestic the vision stays with me all day. The most beautiful and lingering sunsets in amazing colors are to be seen on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where the color often lingers until dark, as if to make that day last just a little longer. My most memorable sunset event occurred off the coast of Cape Charles, Virginia, on the Eastern Shore. We were on a pontoon boat in the Chesapeake Bay headed to play on a low-tide sandbar. Our granddaughter Halsey was five at the time, blossoming even as we gaze. She sat in her canopied director’s chair wearing pink Tevas on her feet, sunscreen on her nose, big sunglasses, and a visor. What words of wisdom can I give them? How can I help to ease their way? On the open water seeing the sun melting into the ocean, its descent is a visual experience. Halsey had done this so many times, she knew precisely when to begin her countdown. She watched carefully, slowly raising her finger. Then it was time; she began to count. Ten, one thousand, nine, one thousand, eight, one thousand…like an egg yolk sliding across a greasy skillet, the brilliant sun, a huge orange orb, slid toward the water. She hesitated at one, finger in the air. “Now!” she proclaimed. And it was gone. The sky ignited into an aurora of orange, red, fiery yellows, and purple. Such a sunset pallet I’d never seen before, all across the watery horizon, as if a million suns had fallen and exploded over millions of miles. I’ll never forget that sunset, that moment. And in that memory, Halsey will forever be five years old. No matter how many sunrises and sunsets pass, I’ll always hold her in that precious moment. Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small? What is your most memorable sunrise, sunset experience? Write about it; so you’ll always have it. Ode to the Floor When I was a little girl I liked to sprawl out on the floor with my crayons and writing tablets. When I walked the two blocks to my grandma’s, taking crayons and tablets with me, mom always said, “Now, don’t be underfoot.” I thought that meant I shouldn’t lay on the floor. So, I colored at the table at Grandma’s house.
Today, I’m thinking of things underfoot: the floors in our new old house. What stories that floor could tell! The oldest floor of the house is solid heart pine. It’s darkened with age and reluctantly divulges secrets of its past. It’s in pristine condition and only needs buffing. The newest part of the old house has pine plank flooring with wild graining prominent because the pith between the grains has worn away. It cries out for restoration. I see rusty iron foot indentations; I know a radiator once warmed this room. Did someone sprawl on the floor near the radiator with coloring books? Did crayons roll under the radiator to melt and leave that waxy ring on the floor? How many soft baby shoes began their walks through life on this floor? How many young housewives crawled on their knees mopping up after the families that walked here before us? Did happy feet kick off their shoes and jitterbug to the music on the radio, twirling across the smooth heart pine? Where’s the corner where children were sent for their transgressions? Did they kick at the molding and scuff the floor in that corner while waiting to be released? Is the watermark in the front corner from a Christmas tree stand overflowing? Is that lighter square where the new-fangled television once sat in a console the size of the icebox with a screen the size of a goldfish bowl? Perhaps the first room addition was to accommodate the viewing of that new television set. I find little threaded metal tubes poking up through the floor marking the birth of the worldwide network years ago. An obsolete wire, stapled to the molding, dangles through a hole in the floor, no longer connected to anything but the floor. How many people were on that party line, I wonder? She was an ancient edition of People Magazine known as “The Operator” and she knew who walked across this floor to answer that telephone. How many cards or letters marking life occasions dropped through the brass mail slot in the front door to land on this floor? Love letters, birthday cards, death notices, college acceptances, draft notices, all piled here on the floor beneath the mail slot. The floors in our new old house are being sanded and refinished. The heart pine will be beautiful; the pine planks will be renewed. Centuries of grime and joy will be removed but stories known only to the floor will remain. Talk to me, Floor. I want to know your three centuries of stories. Over the Rainbow I love colors; always have. My box of 48 Crayola Crayons was my dearest treasure as a child and the only thing I remember ever coveting was the bigger box. So I should be in hog heaven today. But instead I feel a bit overwhelmed, a bit over the rainbow. I’ve discovered Sherwin Williams has more colors than Binney & Smith, and who knew that was even possible? Did you know there are over 100 shades of WHITE?
I’m here in my new old house with the color fan from Sherwin Williams in Edenton, trying to choose paint colors. The colors are riveted together like a big fan. When stacked and closed it’s 5 inches high! I’ve been looking at these colors all day. I’ve made definite, final, decisions. Six times! I’ve stuck the decisions on the walls of the rooms for oh, about 15 minutes; long enough to open the fan once more, second guess, change my mind, pull down the notes, and look some more. Now there are no decisions on any wall. It isn’t complicated, not really. Just about everything is some shade of yellow. But, in the world of color, in the Sherwin Williams kingdom, yellow isn’t really yellow. Today I brought in a daffodil from outside and tried to find the colors. The petals turn out to be SW 0073 Chartreuse. The center is called SW 6907 Forsythia. Well, at least that sounds yellow. I could change my palette to, say, blue. But there are more Blues than Chicago and Harlem put together. There’s no way to hurry this process. I’ll begin again in the morning with fresh eyes. Some authors have told me they go through this with their characters. What color should her hair be? Will it matter? What color are his eyes? Is she going to care? Will skin tone be important to the story? We have to be careful when we pick and choose our colors, don’t we? When I return again to Edenton, we’ll see how well I did at selecting the colors in this story. The writing, uh, color will be on the wall. Stairway Renovation/ What’s blocking your progress? I’ve always loved stairs. My grandma’s house, where I spent a lot of time growing up, had a large staircase where I played. I used to sort mail – old letters, magazines, scrap paper – and put it between the spindles and be the clerk. Every home Dave and I have shared (eleven, I think) has had at least one set of stairs. Our current home has two sets of stairs and I use them every day, several times a day. The laundry is on the first floor, we live on the second, and I write on the third floor. I can’t imagine life without stairs. Our new old house has a stairway to the upstairs bedrooms and bath.
The “problem” I have with these new old stairs is that they are enclosed. Except for the first three steps, then a door, the stair well to my writing room is blocked. I’m enough claustrophobic to know I’d avoid them; I need them open. Dave and Dawson sees that possibility. Then Dawson begins to see more: the original stairs probably were open, and closed in later, most likely during the fuel crisis in the 70s to save heating costs. The result of that is the first three steps have a different balustrade and pickets. The newel posts don’t match either. What’s the story here? Dawson is excited now to take down the wall and see what story this house will tell. It will add light to several places, invite guests to come on up, and return some grace and style that was probably originally there. I hear authors talking about their writer’s block: “I start out fine, then suddenly, it’s like a door, I can’t get past it. What should I do?” I can’t tell you what you should do; I can only tell you what I do. I open the door, take down the wall and let the sun shine in! There’s always more story. If you can’t work through the block, go around it. Skip a chapter, pick it up, and go back to it. I prefer to go straight through it, but not everyone is as bold and as hard-headed as I, so you must do it your way. Open the door, take it off its hinges, tear down the wall, move or remove whatever is keeping you from moving ahead. You will always find more story. When we took down that door and wall in our new old house, we found an enormous story, the discovery that the house was built in 1770. What a story that’s turning into! If we hadn’t torn down the wall and pulled that door down that was blocking our progress, we would never have seen the whole story. Don’t let those so-called writers’ blocks get in the way of your progress. Keep moving. |
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Author Deanna lives in the inner-coastal area of Eastern North Carolina in historic Edenton. She belongs to a local bookclub, SCBWI, Catholic Writers Guild, ACFW, NCWN and other writing groups. Categories |