Windchimes

catch kitsch I wish I may, I might

Well, that was probably the longest February of my life, or maybe it's just that I stuffed it fuller. Stretched every day to contain more miles per minute. Every weekend in February, we stuffed Dad's little studio appartment as full as practically possible, we stuffed a rental storage shed, we stuffed our houses. He was sooo happy to finally get one of us to take our high school graduation robe out of the back bedroom closet. We yard-saled on Saturday, and emptied more on Sunday. They "closed on" the house the next Friday, and my happy father called to let me know he had something in the mail for me.

Oh, the yard sale. You think you're ready to say good-bye to something, and then someone wants to buy it. You've never seen three grown women go into such throes of mourning over a big corning-ware mixing bowl, part of a set of three (well, it was a set of four or five a long time ago). It was the bowl Mom always made potato salad in, and we made sure the lady who bought it knew that it made a very, very, very good potato salad bowl.

I was less sentimental and more excited about selling (for a pittance, as one does at such events as yard sales) the remaining pieces of a certain pattern of corelle dinnerware. Just so happened, the lady who bought that plans to stuff it in her suitcase when she flies to Germany in a few weeks, because she has a friend there who has that particular pattern of corelle dinnerware. She met a friend of hers there at the yard sale, and they started conversing in German, so I joined in. That made for a much brighter little section of the day. Her friend bought the kitchen table, and they seemed much happier about giving fünfzig cent than fifty for anything.

Dad seems so much happier now. The house is gone, no more stove to clean, ever. No more wandering alone around three bedrooms, den, living room, dining room, kitchen, two baths, laundry room and junk room. No more oversized corner-lot lawn to mow. No more landscaping, period.

One of my nieces refers to Dad's new digs as "the hotel." It sometimes reminds me of a landlocked yacht, and I hope he'll get every bit of enjoyment possible from it.

I've got one more week till spring break, and we plan to gather at the rental storage unit to sort through again, try to pare down the leftovers, the things we didn't know what to do with but just couldn't part with. Like Mom's journals. Like a file labeled "Letters to Wanda" in my Dad's handwriting. Like the teaching contract for Mom's Wahiawa teaching stint.

Somehow, it's been decided that I should keep anything and everything that anyone of us will be keeping that has anything to do with Hawaii, or Sweden, or Alaska, or anything Mom ever collected that had to do with somewhere where people primarily speak a language other than English. And Dad's New Testament in Korean. Why did Dad buy a New Testament in Korean?

I am also now the proud owner of an abundance of coffee cups, one of which says "Coffee is the best of all earthly drinks" in Swedish. (Kaffetaren den bäsia är au alla jordiska drycker -- except there should be a small circle over the second 'a' in Kaffetaren. I can't figure out how to get it there.) Maybe so, but I'll take a little Cointreau every now and then too. I took the bar utensil set someone gave my teetotaling parents as a wedding present. My sisters teetotal too. I'm the family...ummm...I'm the only daughter who'd have any use for a corkscrew.

Somehow managed to pretty much keep up with homework during all this, turned a few things in late, but turned them in. Got them done. Not well done, mind you. I wimped out of my "Geology of National Parks" class though. Can't handle geology, on top of everything else, although I really like the word "caldera." I'd like to use it sometime. I guess I just did, but you know what I mean. Some poem using some kind of geologic or volcanic activity as a metaphor for ... I'll decide that if I ever write the poem.

And that reminds me, poetry class. I signed up for a poetry class, and have been getting to know the vast and wonderful world of loosely networked American poet communitites. Went to hear Ted Kooser, the current U.S. poet laureate, read at Oglethorpe University with some of my classmates, raved about it to my sisters the next day...needless to say, they tried to look like they were happy for me. It was great though, because not only did I get to hear him read some of his poems, I got to hear little stories with Nebraska as a setting. His story about getting the poet-laureate phone call is top-notch entertainment, in my opinion. As a matter of fact, I thoroughly enjoyed everything about that evening, and my sisters teased me about my wild night life. Also got to hear A.E. Stallings read at Georgia Tech, and got a book signed. One of the best things about this class, though, is the after class group trip to some local restaurant, where those of us who regularly participate continue to discuass ...something or other. Sometimes poetry, sometimes our writing, sometimes anything else. It doesn't matter, it's just good camaraderie. I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I'm going to be just as sorry to see this class come to an end as I was at the end of the seminar class on Elizabeth Bishop last semester. That was a late-morning class, and a few of us usually ended up in a clump by a bench right outside the building, books open, discussing what we'd each looked up about such and such a word or phrase, or what this or that phrase made us think of.

I really am going to be a college graduate one of these days, I promise. But I'm not in a big hurry, no matter how many people ask, "So, WHEN are you going to graduate?"

However, I need to be in a big hurry to finish about 75 more pages of a novel for my contemporary lit class, so I'll quit clicking here.

J.H. Larrew
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **