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I managed today to convince both my bosses that it�s in everyone�s best interest if I take tomorrow off. I�m coming in this weekend instead to work on a couple �quiet time� projects, things I can�t get done with my phone ringing every two minutes and people with questions in a line at my desk.
I woke up this morning with that horrible �I just can�t go to work� feeling in the pit of my stomach. The feeling that I was going to crumble if anyone looked at me cross-eyed. Instead of following my first instinct and curling back up under my covers, I dragged my sorry ass to work and somehow made it through my day. The knowledge that I don�t have to do it tomorrow helps.
Instead, I�m planning to do some cleaning in the pit of scum and villainy our apartment has become. I�m meeting the Artboy for lunch, too, since he�ll be at JP Licks working in the afternoon. I know I�ll feel better once my conversation with him has happened.
I�ve managed to get to this point in my day without posting another message on Hissyfit, though I haven�t stopped thinking about or reading the conversation happening over there.
I came home from work on the Artboy�s 25th birthday to find that someone had broken our side window, climbed into the apartment, stolen a couple thousand dollars� worth of electronics and walked out the front door.
As I entered the living room that night, the phone was ringing. I answered it and slowly realized as the woman on the other end quacked in my ear that everything was in disarray and my television was gone. I hung up without taking her message and, without hesitation, called the police. Two officers came almost immediately and checked the whole house, dusting for fingerprints and taking a forgotten cigarette pack from the floor. The police were helpful and courteous, telling us there was little chance the stolen items would be found, but they would do their best and be in touch.
An obvious crime had been committed. Tangible evidence had been left behind. Unfortunately, the burglars were never caught, but regardless, no one questioned whether I was telling the truth, or if I�d given away my TV and then changed my mind, or wondered why I�d reported it in the first place.
If only every crime situation were that black and white.
Anyway�
My mom and I talked for a long time last night about my grandparents� summer house in Conway. It�s a camp, really��summer house� makes it sound much more grand than the two rooms upstairs full of ancient furniture and a black and white 13-inch TV set and one room downstairs, a basement cement kitchen with a wood stove in the back to heat the place, and an outhouse beyond the door.
I spent all my summers in Conway for most of my school years. Nana and Papa would drive down to pick me up mere days after school ended, and I would stay straight through Labor Day and my birthday, coming home just in time to start my next grade. My parents would come up too, intermittently, but most of the time I was alone with Nana and Papa. It never occurred to me to be bored. I had a lake to swim and fish and canoe in, and blueberries to pick, and islands and woods to explore, and friends on other banks to visit, a huge rock just off the shore for sunbathing and picnicking.
When I was very small, the camp was just a platform tent. My grandfather eventually built the cottage that stands there now. He built with the help of my great uncle, who lived in the camp at the top of the hill, and his neighbors, Fee, who had a French Canadian accent and a quick sense of humor, and Dick Baybitt, who, with his wife Ellie, were my surrogate grandparents. It was a labor of love.
Nana and I would sit in the kitchen and make wild blueberry pie, perch and pickerel fillets, Italian doughnuts�all sorts of yummy things. My growth process is preserved on a doorframe near the stairs. A concealed drawer in the dresser upstairs holds my childhood secrets.
More than that, the house holds my childhood.
My uncle has Plans for the house. He wants to �make it better,� to �improve� it into what it �could be.� He wants to cover the Rock with a new dock, leading further out into the water. He wants to repaint, to replace the dishes, to �fix� everything.
He wants to take what�s left of my grandparents out of the house.
My mom doesn�t want to argue with him. She refuses to allow the house to come between her and her brothers. She chooses her family over the property.
So she�s pulling out of Conway, giving up her part of the house.
I completely understand why, but I�m still heartbroken. It�s like letting go of a piece of who I am.
Mom�s right, though. No amount of holding on will bring my grandmother back.
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