Discovery

Generally, the cleaning out of my childhood home has been difficult, challenging and with few rewards. Like after my mother’s death when my dad and I dealt with all of her clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup and other personal effects, the days of cleaning are long and labor-intensive. Everything must be sorted, bagged, and removed. It is not hard physical labor, but it is labor. Then when things are removed, the prospect of cleaning remains. Eventually, when it is done, there are empty rooms which provide a sense of accomplishment, certainly, but also loneliness as though the loss of my mother, of the past, of childhood manifests itself in empty space.

As I have written before, the house in Michigan is nearly cleaned out. I have one more trip to Goodwill. The basement floor still needs to be painted. Almost all of the electrical work has been done, though the electrician will return on Monday for the final needed outlets and fixes. We will have to pack up our personal effects and the dozens (perhaps over a hundred) books that I have accumulated and the issues of Sinister Wisdom that I have had shipped here. Remaining will be a couch, a dresser, a desk, two tables. My dad will take some, the rest will be donated. The empty house will go on the market.

This ending, combined with our ending in Maryland, feels like the closing of many chapters, many books in my life. Many have observed how lucky I am to have had this opportunity–to help my dad, to help my grandmother, to have closure in this space. Like the skunk incident, however, I could have lived a happy life without these experiences. Maybe though, I’ve always been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

When I first arrived back in Saginaw, there was one book I wanted to find in the house. A big, glossy book I remembered as a teenager called, The Horse. For the first four months, I looked through my father’s books, convinced that it was somewhere on one of the shelves in the house. Dad and I discussed it. He had not seen it. I could not find it. I wanted to have that book back in my collection. It seemed though that it was gone forever.

Amid the search for The Horse, I did find the first book I made as a child.

The title page:

I was not yet using my middle initial and I seem to recall that we had very specific guidelines to follow in the creation of this book.

Then a few days after finding Blackie–the story of a colt, while cleaning out storage under the eaves, I found the book I remembered loving as a teenager.

Encyclopedia of The Horse. It is as gorgeous as I remember. I am so happy to have it back in my library.