is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Houses and Hauntings.
I�m staying in a house from which someone well-loved passed away two years ago. I never knew her. She passed away during the same month as did my grandmother and my oldest friend�s mother, two of my non-mother mother figures. My grandmother spent a lot of time as my caretaker when I was young and both my parents were working. Marilyn�s mom was my �caretaker� when I was in high school and denying I needed such things, so that my mom became for Marilyn what her mom was for me: the opposite of what was at home, but something that was needed without that need being expressed overtly (you know how teenagers are). I had to choose between attending funerals for my grandmother and Marilyn�s mom, because they died within days of each other and their funerals were held on the same day in locations thousands of miles apart.
This week, as I�m staying in this house, I�m filled with thoughts of these people. It�s not that the house is haunted, if by �haunted� we think we mean that spirits mischievous or malevolent are having their way with our sixth senses. It�s more like there is a presence here of someone no longer around in a material sense, a presence created by a concentrated form of thinking about or still dwelling with someone who is no longer around. I�m not sure whether that�s what constitutes a haunting. But I have had my grandmother on my mind more often than usual (and, to be honest, 'usual' already means fairly often) these last few days. It is clearly not always a bad thing to have been so affected by someone that she remains a presence for you even when she has taken leave of your location.
Because, well, I suppose for this kind of �haunting� the conjured up person needn�t even be dead, just gone. Out of sight is not out of mind, so the saying goes. However death, no duh, imposes a kind of finality and thus a sort loose-end-of-the-thread-that-used-to-be-longer sort of feeling. And that is how I feel this week. My thread used to be longer. It has been cut. In that way I am free. But it is a melancholy sort of freedom I have. The reasons for this are more complex than I�m going to try to state here. The less complex version is the one well known: I�m a bit alone, adrift, unmoored just now. Living in Pennsylvania but still really dwelling in California on some level. Not knowing where I�ll be, or when where-I�ll-be will be more permanent.
Sleeping in a strange bed in a house full of people who have lost so much but still have �more� than I do on many levels is itself a haunting thing. I�m an outsider here, though I�ve always felt welcomed as a guest. It�s the extended stay that underlines the �outsider� rather than highlighting (or, dare I say it, drop-shadowing) the �guest� portion of the role I�m assigned to play. At the same time I�ve felt blessed to have this extended stay because these gifts of time are what make people parts of each other�s lives. It doesn't happen in other ways.
I doubt my conscious mind is capable of reckoning with all the factors that together become my love of this house. At least I am fully aware that the love of this house isn�t of the house�the house itself is always too cold and a bit too modern, although it is filled with things I enjoy like a great kitchen, amazing shower with windows that look out over the snowy landscape, good food, comfy couches and a huge television, not to mention the people��the love is not of the material structure of the house. It�s of the people. As it should be.
Speaking of which, I love the way Tom�s son J--- communicates in mostly unspoken ways. He always uses the barest number of words or even syllables necessary to get across his point or question or desire. This means that there is a lot left unsaid, and a lot left to wonder. But his ways of accomplishing communication are affective (that is the word I intend, not a spelling mistake). I like sitting next to him at the kitchen counter, eating food, knowing we might speak or we might not, and not feeling like the silence needs to be filled or interrupted in any way. It isn't shyness or indifference with him. I always appreciate people who are comfortable with silence, who don�t think it a weakness or a strangeness. In addition, he is an excellent exchanger of looks when something funny or odd or exasperating or bizarre or mysterious or predictable happens. He has a gift. It is not his only one.
In other news, in the guest room of this house there is a large stuffed chihuahua wearing a cape and a sombrero, and it sings La Bamba when you do whatever it is that has to be done to it to get it to be more hideous than it already is. Tom suggested, circa the Pip-killed-Buffy episode, that I sleep with that thing instead! Instead of sleeping with it I hid it behind a statue so it wouldn�t be looking at me with its idiotic googly eyes while I was sleeping. I am haunted enough! Two out of four nights spent sleeping in this house I had vivid dreams of my grandmother and woke up disappointed that they were only dreams. Anyway, Tom brought out the chihuahua one night to show it to someone else, and he made it do its hideous La Bamba thing, and Pip started barking and growling at it, because apparently Pip is smarter than we thought. However, it amused me to no end when I went to bed later to see that when Tom put Hideous Chihuahua back in the guest room, he replaced it to where I had put it behind the statue instead of to where it had been hovering on the shelf over my guest bed. It is lovely sometimes when our friends humor our strange needs and wants, is it not? No one said a word when I took a pillow from the couch to use as a Buffy substitute.
8:33 p.m. - December 13, 2005
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