Autumn, and the thingness of things comes to the fore. Mind you, it is never far from the fore hereabouts (& any doubt on this score would have been cleared up by the effect of Baroque Mansions' recent deshabillé on the nerves of its prime inhabitant). Oh yes.
Well, last night I dreamed and dreamed. I dreamed about many things.
One of them was the death of a darling friend which occurred three years ago yesterday, and which, while I remembered it of course, I didn't exactly acknowledge in any way because I was inundated with babies and teenagers and laundry, and I was quite glad this morning to note that I had at least managed to do it in my sleep.
Another was my mother, arriving at some place I was in and which might have been a stand-in for my sister's apartment, with a van full of my stuff. I found that it was being delivered, without my prior knowledge and whether I liked it or not, that minute - there was a moving guy making noise about having to leave, like, that minute. One of the most amazing things about the dream was walking out onto the landing and getting a glimpse of my things - so ineffably beautiful, gorgeous complicated-coloured quilts and subtle objects... a plaster statue of someone, I don't know, Dante. All so beautiful it made me gasp. (That's reassuring! At least my stuff was nice!)
It was all made up for the dream, but very plausible or like things I do own. Things out on the lawn. A tiny, two-inch-square Victorian Bible, my mother handed me in the dream saying, "this is your grandmother's Bible, I'm giving it to you instead of your great-grandfather's Bible because it's too big" - pointing to a gigantic old thing four inches thick which promptly tumbles heavily back into a box, cover askew, making me fear for its binding, but you can't worry about everything. Mom hands me the little one and I think of my grandmother, calm in all circumstances. Too calm, some might say. (No danger there, then.) It occurs to me now that the little Bible in the dream looked a bit like a tiny old Victorian photo album that was knocking around the place when I was a child.
There was a lot of uncontrollable crying, grieving, inconsolable - in dream conversations and dream restaurants and dream cars and dream vacuums - a default state of being.
Now, it's interesting, because when I was in the USA the thing I didn't really write about was what was really happening. I was dreaming a lot but I wasn't depressed or sad or feeling sentimental, or overcome with nostalgia. Interested, yes; and alert.
La Maison du Baroque is being broken up, and will be sold for money just as soon as can be. Every time I went there I was told, "sort out these cookbooks" (we are a family of cooks; I rescued many recipe cards from the index boxes, including Mother Bush's Molasses Cookies, Mark Twain's favourite sweet mincemeat cakes, and a very interesting peach butter made with tinned peaches; a pile of cookbooks including books my dad gave me and books I gave him; his James Beard, and his Shaker cookbook) or, "which of these poetry books of le Duc do you want?" (Oh excuse me, I said, the Collected Marianne Moore, his old familiar Eliot, some Millay firsts admittedly stained with ink) or, "tomorrow, when it's cooler, we'll go through The Trunk in the Guest Room."
The Trunk in the Guest Room is, I think, going straight to my sister. But we had to "go through it" first. I wasn't thinking anything of it until the moment, in the guest room, when it was flung open. It contained:
On top: the star afghan crocheted by one of my grandparents (which one?), large coloured stars on a black ground, which is the single most memorable thing from their home and which I have always loved, and which my father pointedly kept when they died; fair enough. This was simply handed to me, a task to tick off.
Under it: Grandma's porcelain birds, including a cardinal that makes me six again, and the little box with a china baby looking into it, with a minuscule bluebird on the top, that makes me three again.
Underneath: two Canadian handwoven wool blankets made a long time ago by relatives of Mother Pelletier, one with cream striped woven in and one with pale rainbow stripes. I took the rainbow one. Very good quality. I already have two patchwork quilts (one unfinished, which I have stretched across a frame 6" by 8") made by Mother Pelletier. A green cotton crocheted tablecloth, much washed and mended, clearly made by Grandpa. (It is impossible to say what beautiful needlework my grandparents both produced, or how this was valued by mountain people who had no money, but much time and skill and patience. You couldn't buy this stuff now.) A cream bedspread crocheted by Aunt Ida - that is, Great-aunt Ida, Grandpa's sister. I hadn't realised she crocheted too, and the presence of this bedspread speaks volumes about the truth of my previous assessment of its importance. My sister took the bedspread and I have to say I still feel a bit sick. But I have no room...
I literally plucked pictures in their frames from the walls. I had to; they were my dad's before I was born, and the girls in the pictures know me, and those walls won't be there soon. One of them I hadn't intended to take, but when I went back she was looking at me with such an expression of familiarity and trust that I felt I had no choice. Giving up the Two Reading Sisters (one of them fair and one dark; I always imagined they were us) would have been like selling my father, and my sister, downstream.
A framed embroidered desert scene on a hectic orange background, made by Grandma.
I was given a ring. We all said, "Grandma would have never worn this!" It was a mystery, a huge tiger's eye in a really unusual setting. But it reeks of the fifties, and looks like he might have picked it up during his time in Mexico, which might mean he was young enough that he consulted his own taste more than his mother's. I showed it to a lovely man who's buying some of the paintings, and he said, "that looks like Taxco silver." I'd never heard of Taxco, Mexico before, but sure enough the inside of the ring says, "Mexico 925."
I was given another ring. It's an enormous, flashy, (Katie) Scarlett O'Hara amethyst set in a silver filigree setting that looks, side on, like the princess' crown. It goes to my knuckle but is delicate and pretty. It was a gift, we think, from my great-grandfather John Peter to his second wife, Charlotte. (His first wife, Catherine Olivia, died at 49 and I'm named after her. From the only photo I've seen of her I doubt she'd have worn that ring. I think it's been waiting for me all these years.)
These two rings alone are now practically the two most remarkable things I own. I guess they must have been in Gandma's things all those years.
All these things! Whatever William Carlos Williams might say, they knocked all the ideas out of me. I felt strangely flat, being given the star afghan: it just felt too big, too serious to respond to. Carrying the little girl in her Victorian frame out to the car I had to stop from crying. I've had to put her in the post, and I've sort of resigned myself to fate. In an odd way I know her as well as my dad. (This may not be as facetious as it sounds: I got talking on the plane home to an economist who has no memory of the pictures she loved as a child. I was describing the way a love of art just comes, the way pictures you loved as a child just stay with you as physical impressions or imprints, and she had no similar experience. This, strangely, gave me a taste of how strong my own experience of pictures may be compared to some other people's.)
We're here for such a short, time, and the things we live among outlive us. In that way they have more power, and we must find a way to access that power and use it to gain, what? wisdom? depth of perception? In this way the tiger's eye ring is no different from Chartres Cathedral; and my dad's Mexico sojourn is just as impossible to find in the sands of time as 12th-century France is.
I was given one of my grandmother's tortoise brooches; sis has the other.
Dishes. Depression glass.
Catherine Olivia's silver service (sis got the other one which is as pretty as can be and has a dinky carving set!), two sets of unusual and adorable coffee spoons, and six really good, and old, solid silver teaspoons.
A big old family Bible containing about ten funeral service cards from 1906, and a photo of Dad aged seven. Bless him.
I also sat for the last time in the very spot where Grandma died, over her knitting. The house will be sold long before I get back over there, even if it's as soon as I'm saying I'm going to try to.
No wonder I'm having dreams! And THEN there's the rest of it, the actual visits with le Duc himself - to say nothing of everyone else, including Mama Baroque, and the strange feeling of spending decades getting used to being in a different country and suddenly turning a corner and being just across from the hospital where you were born.
A friend I had dinner with in New York last week put it in a really good way. His sister lives abroad and when I was talking about finding it hard to go home for visits he said, "yeah, you get the bends every time." He's so right. You come up all depressurised, or is it pressurised.
But the laundry's almost done, the place is back to a relatively messy normal, and I start work tomorrow for the first time in over three months. I'm going to the GP first. I'm nervous. I'm still tired. But I'm also going back to the herbalist next week.
The kids have all decamped to their usual encampments. The babymummy and I had a very fun time today in some local charity shops; she chose me a fabulous purple jumper I'd never have picked, and a black stretch denim pencil skirt with an eighties look about it which I love and will probably wear tomorrow. I hope we'll do it again.
The sunset was very pink tonight, and the balcony was cold, and I'm in my new jumper. I have an exsciting and lovely scarf half-knitted. I'm reminded of how in the winter the fishermen mended their nets, and the farmers their tools.
I have mending to do too: an interview to finish, a book ms to edit & submit, several poems started in the US, a couple more I need for the book, and a few competitions to enter if I can find something to send out.
Okay so the money-saving tips are not arriving. Хорошо это деньги экономии советы не поступают. Ms Baroque has had a fabulous cut & colour Г-жа барокко пришлось вырезать и прекрасные цвета (в Beaucatcher в Стоке Невингтон церковь, улица Торговая, а не экономии денег, но удовольствие), купленный около сладкий зеленый серьги из кнопок (Хамилтонс, церковь Св., как указано выше), купили - 140 фунтов стерлингов стоимостью бакалейные товары, черные кожаные сандалии патента, и влияние некоторых Уго Boss духи. Well, that one was an emergency. Ну, что было чрезвычайной. Поэтому я считаю, что деньги решений оконечности здесь просто не оказаться, как я. Let them eat Waitrose foodstuffs and drink French rosé. Пусть они едят Waitrose пищевых продуктов и напитков читать по-французски.
