[The following is a feat of patience wonder, since I am forced to

I am in suburban Boston now, on the South Shore visiting my
grandparents in the home in which my grandmother has spent her entire
life.

My grandparents have always been so youthful in spirit, but now they
seem to have finally grown old, and my grandfather in particular seems
to be showing his age. This is why I've come here now, and, frankly,
it's been far too long. I have so few regrets in life but among them
are that I spent far too long as a moody, self-absorbed teenager who
didn't spend enough time with his family. I can't undo the past and I
guess there's no reason to want to, but I do know that I need to try
going forward to open up more and get in better touch with the roots
of existence.

---

The first thing that hits me everytime I return to Holbrook, the town
where they live, is the deep emotional impact of my grandparents' home.

These are modest folk and their house is small and quaint. But, as is
the case with any home lived in for so long, it is filled with many
old strange things: oddities, delights, and useless curios of the
past, having been given no reason to cease taking up time and space in
the present.

Now though, so many years down, it is something else. At this point,
this house and everything in it is more "of age" than not, and it's
merely the smattered speckling of new dotting the dominating landscape
of old. Every molding, every piece of wood, every dish and knick knack
on the shelves covered in the moist layer of dust that speaks of
eternal solidification. As if, were time to stop right now, everything
would already be located in it's precise final resting place.

Also among the still ghosts of the home are the dead souls of the
yard--an old vacuum cleaner, a net for a now non-extant pool, metallic
items so old and rusted as to no longer be anything more than that.
And though I have no idea how it got here, there is even a shopping
cart, filled with matted-down leaves of who knows how many seasons.

I know that for some people even into old age there is an important
desire to clean, purge and refresh, so that even if nothing is new
there is still active circulation of old. In the homes of my family
though, we buy and we build and we use, and then we find the spot to
live eternally, a resting place for evermore. I don't think it's
because we like to dwell on the past so much as that we have little
interest in participating in ceremonial goodbyes. And so, instead, our
homes are tumoric growths, building around the past as if a tree were
growing through the living room floor.

---

Of course, lest my eyes get caught up witnessing lives poured over and
frozen in place by amber resin, my conversations here are rarely
anything short of self-aware and, lately, the macabre.

When discussing a young fuck-up in the family last night, I said that,
"I am sure that in 15 years he will seem like a very different person
and none of you will be worrying about him." To which my grandfather
responded, "Well, you'll have to figure out how to telegraph it to me
in the beyond" and my grandmother immediately chimed in, "Yes, maybe
you can have a séance to tell him!" chortling with laughter as the
words escaped her lips.

This is life, I guess, always moving forward. Laughing or not.

Labels: BEAUMONT, family, memories, old flames, thoughts