All I have done the last week is wander around the house putting things away in preparation for potential buyers. People come to a house wanting to imagine themselves living there and don't want to see the birthday party invitations on the fridge, the stupid postcard collection on the cork board, the book choices of the present occupiers next to the beds or god forbid their worn down toothbrushes next to the sink. We are not selling ourselves - merely the vessel we live in. Save the interesting tidbits for the dinner parties please.
But today my boys come home at 3:30 pm and then it is time for homework, haircuts and dinner - so the people coming at 5:30 and the next group at 6:00 might just have to deal with a bit of our reality. Perhaps we will save viola practice for after dinner.
It is interesting the reactions of the potential buyers. Besides the line about the Master Bedroom being too small (come on man! There is room for a queen size bed, two night stands a bookshelf - what else do people do in their bedrooms? Never mind....strike that.) many people have trouble with the fact we back up onto the WORLD FAMOUS HOOP LANE CREMATORIUM. Sigmund Freud and Anna Pavlova were cremated there for goodness sake - this is a shrine and they should be so lucky! The Memorial Gardens are beautiful and our view from our tree house bedroom is spectacular of the gardens, the poplars, the open fields. Clearly these people have issues with death.
I have also been very busy eating many little snacks of varying degree of healthiness and writing emails.
In reality, I have the attention span of a gnat. I am so overwhelmed with the Holy Trinity of Emotions -(1) profound sadness for leaving London after six years of really living; (2) terror of not knowing where we are going and where we will end up; and (3) excitement for the unknown and all the adventures that it holds in store for us.
I feel as if I am watching myself from the ceiling and man oh man, am I ever boring.
To quote Simon, "I feel like this (whole trip) isn't happening to me."
What is so weird is that when my brother Martin was tragically killed in a a horrible car accident in August of 1988 I also felt this way - like I was watching myself go through the motions from above. That summer I was living in Dallas, Texas with a lovely Democratic supporter of Mike Dukakis who had graciously donated her guest bedroom so I could live for free while I worked with the coordinated campaign led by Congressman Martin Frost's office for the election of Mike Dukaks and Lloyd Bentsen for President and Vice President.
At that point, I had been on the road for close to a year organizing various congressional districts from the corn fields of Kansas, to the beer drinking college town of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, to the dying coal town of Steubenville, Ohio. I arrived in Dallas for the general election and in August things were looking like we still might have a chance.
Barbara, my hostess, was a lawyer and a brilliant one at that, with a judgeship under her belt, a quiet yet mighty forcefulness to her voice, a dry wit, an artistic bent and her heart in the right place. Each morning she would go off to her office and I went to mine and rarely would I see her. Then one Tuesday afternoon she was in the campaign office. This wasn't all that rare and usually it meant something fun - a surprise check in or a quick bite for lunch so while I was surprised to see her, I was also excited. She was like an older sister and took her role seriously of watching over her 26 year old charge. But that Tuesday was different. She came to tell me about my brother. She hardly knew me. My mom had called her and asked her to tell me in person because my mom wanted to make sure I wasn't alone.
Poor Barbara to have to be the one to tell me.
But as soon as she told me I immediately felt a rush of noise in my ears that wouldn't go away for months. As I look back on it now I am on the ceiling watching myself on the floor looking up at Barbara, searching her face. Wondering how a woman whom I had known for less than a month could say the name of my brother whom she had never met. And now would never meet.
When Martin died at 28 he left behind his Korean wife Sang and their two children Amy was 3 and Luke was just 1. Martin was a bit of a wild man. He was the kid in high school who never wore shoes. He was smarter than his teachers and knew it. He jumped railroad cars and biked across the country more than once. He was the guy on skis that went straight down the mountain because turning was for wussies.
He wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty to show my dad he could be successful without having gone to some fancy east coast college. And he did - he was only 28 and he was a millionaire when he died thanks to the highly exclusive and prestigious business of floor buffing and waxing.
Yesterday I got an email from Sang in response to our Big Announcement email. Sang wrote to say that Martin had wanted to do a trip like the one we are planning with her and Amy and Luke. Martin is going on this trip. He will be looking down at us as we are camping in the desert, protecting us as we drive over mountainous passages, and singing country western songs along with us as we listen to the radio. But he liked Merle Haggard and I prefer Hank Williams.
I guess life changing event and out of body experiences are par for the course and this means I am a mere mortal.
Time to go put away the toothbrushes.
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