In fact, they do. Nothing noisy. No annoying chatter. Just quiet murmurs. The faintest of queries, the gentlest of reminders that keep me company day in and day out. That make this safe space, still more comforting.
When I moved from our home on Choteau Street to this little condo, iridescent most days with a rising and traveling sun and most evenings with reflected mountain glow, I thought I’d live lean. I’d sorted and sorted. Given many Walter belongings to Dave’s girls. Dave’s papers to the Montana Historical Society. His books to the Salish Kootenai College. And I’d jettisoned many of my own odd or bulky treasures. I didn’t really need that collection of “best of the worst” tourist trinkets, for instance. And had no place to put my mother’s 1929 Graybar sewing machine —more shrine than function.
Instead, I fantasized about these tall, bare walls with just a few stark paintings. A new start. A clean one. Light radiating around me.
So much for not knowing my own soul. The jig was up before the moving truck even arrived. My giveaway stash had seemed enormous. But the treasures–paintings and books and bowls and antiques–I’d set aside to keep were just as ample.
Then I designated two walls as floor to ceiling galleries. The rest to yawn clear and open. Even that plan disintegrated. Faced with objects and art awkward and lonely in boxes, I lifted them out and found homes for them. Truth be told, I’ve acquired new old prizes too. Objects whose history I weave from thin air and imagination. In fact, this week a small family of mystical animals, spirit guides—alebrijes—moved in.
I am now surrounded by treasures. Pleasantly arranged, I hope. Still quite a changing , luminous chorus of old and new friends.
And they do all reach out. A glance from my kitchen sink becomes the flutter of the wren carved neatly onto a Gettysburg fence post; Dan Hillen’s towering tongue-in-cheek stained glass fish purchased with the last of my Park Service retirement money; Kay’s rosemaled bowl and Diana’s woven willow basket saying hello; Dave’s traveling speaker’s stand, shaky but functional. From the sofa, Janene and the Yellowstone sky and water paintings hum. The faded paper flowers, remnants of my first Nogales border crossing—a Sunday morning adventure when the world was simpler–join in. Mother’s yellow cookie mixing bowl—a Fiestaware orphan in our home–pipes up, not far from the small blue pitcher Sonja and I used for Kool Aid on summer afternoons. Just beyond the gypsy lamp that Jean and I decorated three years ago.
In truth, it’s more breathing and being than talking and singing. The voices and gestures are subtle. Mostly, I don’t consciously name the associations I sense as I move around my house. But feel, instead, the presence of each object, the stories they carry inside, their sparking filaments of memory. The witness they bear to times and places and people that I’ve known and loved.
The blue and white bedroom on Ash Street captured by the cat photo I chose for my 4-H decorating project. The china plates that Corrine painted for Mother even though Mother lived beyond the housewifely duties depicted. Carol’s fetching skinny-legged birds—part of my growing collection of color. The paper stream that ripples down my wall, a piece of “Water Finds a Way” from the Holter. Bob’s intrusive cat, of course, presented on a Blue Ridge Parkway Christmas. The print that Dave treasured and embodied—horse and rider enduring a blizzard’s whipping winds. Mother’s fernery. My summer straw ranger hat. The brass lamp I bought for a nickel at a Pennsylvania auction. Roberta’s carved cardinal the winter Mother came back as one. Amanda’s golden ballet dancers.
My kitchen utensils radiate still stronger kinetic energy. Mother’s hands held the everyday silverware I use, her funnel for filling Mason jars with hot, newly skinned peaches, the miniature rubber scrapers she loved because they ferreted out last threads of batter. I see her small, strong hands with her modest wedding rings beside mine as I get ready for company. As I do Dave’s large ones when he wielded his pizza cutter.
We shed, I believe, the quarks of our being – the smallest elements of the energy out of which we’re fashioned. And so, it is with that half-muddled, half-fantastical belief that I care for the ordinary and the beautiful objects I’ve savored along in this life. I believe that a trace of Grandma Sherfy still hovers over her metal measuring cup, the one she used to bake her cherries into pies. I believe that I can see the small farm girl whose dad made her the diminutive play-house cupboard. That the syrup pitcher whose simple contents sustained my dad’s threadbare preacher’s family tells of a hundred skimpy meals. That the rose-painted enamel coffee pot I bought at a Navaho trading post carries desert wind. That the ties Dave donned each work day dress my day with his spirit. And that I sleep at night in the safety of Mother’s arms under the quilt she designed and sewed for me forty years ago—the shifting prism pieces of cloth each telling their own stories.
Likely there will come a time before too long, where I’ll need to winnow my belongings again—severely; to choose among the remnants that still carry the breath and energy of what and who I’ve loved. Or, my dimming eyes might blur each shape. And, as it is for every person whose years bring them a steady stream of goodbyes, I will rebel and mourn. And hope that these frail words will sustain their being a bit longer. ©
