tangibles
breaking old furniture with a heavy axe makes my mother happy.
i look on as she expertly unhinges shelves and doors with the back of the axe. this is the highlight of her day: the cabin patio has been freed of clutter - the extra bits of wood and plywood from construction stored to the side of the garden out of her way - and now the time has come for her to deal with the remains of our old hallway set of cabinets.
¨that was the first furniture we bought for our home,¨ says dad. their home of 33 years ago, where they didn´t have a proper bed until after i was born. later we moved, later still the cabinets migrated on the balcony, as support for growing plants and piles of magazines. recently hidden under the stairs of the ´countryside´ cabin, they haven´t been properly used in...decades. ¨why do you want to break it?¨ he asks. the axe hovers above the cabinet.
my mother wants things to be clean and clear, and this requires sacrifice and she is a tireless martyr. having things to fix and dispose of is a necessity. in my mother´s heaven, there´s no resting in peace. and i´m with her on this, because i´ve left things behind, scavenged furniture in the street and abandoned it, and know about the importance of letting go and moving on. so i take a cold look at the surviving cardboardy cabinet with the white paint peeling off. ¨this is not even fit to give away,¨ i pronounce.
¨are you serious? it´s perfectly good! it just needs a hinge for this door, a coat of paint, and it´s like new!¨ i shrug, because it being like new is not the point. i´m the person who´s been keeping old notebooks, dolls, coins, beads, bits of fabric, postcards for years and decades. i started this blog to write about small concrete things. to replace the illusion that i could keep mine forever with the illusion that i could catch them in stories. what a sad, cheap trick, i think now.
¨why do you have to do it?¨ he repeats. in my family it´s never about convincing the other through logical arguments. i look at my parents in stand-off and think how irritating it is to love them both.
then my mother puts the axe down.
then she will laugh at him for days to come.
i look on as she expertly unhinges shelves and doors with the back of the axe. this is the highlight of her day: the cabin patio has been freed of clutter - the extra bits of wood and plywood from construction stored to the side of the garden out of her way - and now the time has come for her to deal with the remains of our old hallway set of cabinets.
¨that was the first furniture we bought for our home,¨ says dad. their home of 33 years ago, where they didn´t have a proper bed until after i was born. later we moved, later still the cabinets migrated on the balcony, as support for growing plants and piles of magazines. recently hidden under the stairs of the ´countryside´ cabin, they haven´t been properly used in...decades. ¨why do you want to break it?¨ he asks. the axe hovers above the cabinet.
my mother wants things to be clean and clear, and this requires sacrifice and she is a tireless martyr. having things to fix and dispose of is a necessity. in my mother´s heaven, there´s no resting in peace. and i´m with her on this, because i´ve left things behind, scavenged furniture in the street and abandoned it, and know about the importance of letting go and moving on. so i take a cold look at the surviving cardboardy cabinet with the white paint peeling off. ¨this is not even fit to give away,¨ i pronounce.
¨are you serious? it´s perfectly good! it just needs a hinge for this door, a coat of paint, and it´s like new!¨ i shrug, because it being like new is not the point. i´m the person who´s been keeping old notebooks, dolls, coins, beads, bits of fabric, postcards for years and decades. i started this blog to write about small concrete things. to replace the illusion that i could keep mine forever with the illusion that i could catch them in stories. what a sad, cheap trick, i think now.
¨why do you have to do it?¨ he repeats. in my family it´s never about convincing the other through logical arguments. i look at my parents in stand-off and think how irritating it is to love them both.
then my mother puts the axe down.
then she will laugh at him for days to come.
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