We had to clear mom's house out over the weekend --by we, I mean my sisters did it. All I did was show up like a looter and carry off a few pieces of furniture. None of it was absolutely necessary and under the circumstances, with me trying to get rid of things, probably a little counterproductive.
And expensive. With gas, tolls and driving my car back and forth, renting the 14 foot Uhaul truck ran around $300, which is a lot.
There was a snag with the pickup. Instead of getting it in Virginia, I had to get it just over the border in Princeton, about 30 miles from the house where I grew up, at a little place that specialized in hunting gear, paramilitary fashions, doomsday prepping and taxidermy.
It was a weird enough place: a stuffed river otter sat in the middle of the store and the back wall was lined with rebel flag belt buckles.
I'd been here before. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was the snack bar to a go-cart track. The church I attended back made a trip to it and we all drove around in circles until our faces were rubbed raw and sore. The ghost of that track still remained, though choked now with high grass and weeds and locked behind a chain link fence.
"The owner shut it down when he bought the place nine years ago," the lady at the counter told me.
It seemed to me that there was some great and ugly truth in that place. I didn't stick around to take a second look.
I got to the house just before lunch and with some help loaded up the things I'd asked to take. My sister also convinced me to take an oak book shelf.
"Mom paid $300 for it," she said.
I think she just wanted to make sure that not every nice thing ended up getting sold off for pennies and I like books. She might have thought I'd put books on it.
It was odd to see people pick over my mother's things, odder still to see some asshole in shorts and black socks with a matching black pistol clipped to his straining waistband.
Who takes a handgun to a yard sale?
As the bargain hunters pilfered through my mom's stuff, the neighbors across the street were out mowing their lawns. One guy at the larger of the two houses had his iPod on and was belting out the chorus to some song as he rounded the corner on his riding mower. To the right and across the road, a young, severe-looking man worked a push mower.
I sort of sympathized with him. Pushing a mower can get to be real work, but then he took his grimy shirt off. Black tattoos covered his pale arms and torso, the most prominent of which was a thick, black swastika just under his ribcage.
Other tattoos seemed to support the general theme of a deep, abiding (and exclusive) love for white people.
"Holy shit," I said dragging a washing machine to the truck. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
I hadn't seen that kind of shit even on the grounds of the National Alliance --of course, that had been in the winter. You'd expect that even the Nazis know to keep their shirts on in the snow --well, I don't know that for sure.
Anyway, knowing that the Third Reich was living next door to where I grew up made me feel less bad about my Mom living in a nursing home.
A little later, my kid sister told me the buyer came by earlier, said she loved the place.
"It feels like home," the woman told her.
My sister was in tears. I wasn't far behind. My feelings were complicated. I'd never wanted to remain here, never wanted to settle in Pearisburg, but I had a lot of memories of waking up in this house. I remembered the old paint on the walls and what the place smelled like during the holidays.
I almost lost it completely looking out the window of my old bedroom.
I spent too much time opening drawers and closets. I have no idea what I was looking for. I lingered over my mother's insane collection of Christmas crap for probably 20 minutes. For years, mom collected little Santa Clause decorations. She must have had close to a thousand jolly, little fat men. It had taken her decades to amass them and now they were all up for sale in bulk.
I recoiled at the cost, at the hours of her life she'd traded for the money to buy these things and now they were going for very little. It seemed a terrible trade.
My girlfriend said, "Did she enjoy looking for them? Did she like putting them out?"
Of course, she did. Mom loved those things, delighted in them.
"Then it's OK," she said. "It was what she wanted."
On the way back, we stopped in to visit my mom. It had been a couple of months since I'd been down and I felt horrible that first time I'd come to visit in weeks was to come take her stuff.
I wear my guilt like a cheap tattoo.
Mom was nicer about my absence than I deserved, but she didn't like that I couldn't stay for long. I didn't like that I couldn't stay very long, but I had obligations and responsibilities, among them a marooned 19-year-old who got off work at 7.
Buses don't run back and forth through Pinch on the weekends.
I took the furniture back to my house, managed to get it put away and resolved to throw out things that would be replaced by the new stuff. The things I've put up -- my mother's table and chairs, the corner cabinets and her silverware -- have added a little maternal warmth to the kitchen.
It feels like part of her is here, but the house doesn't feel like home, not to me.
I hope it will for somebody else.
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