When a Home Becomes a House
Little by little I am removing personal effects from my house in Ithaca. My intention is to leave intact and fully serviceable for people who want to stay here over the next four months to wallow in the memories of Ithaca summers past. This house has Ben a magnet for all the detritus of family life for us over the past twenty-five years. Whenever we are given an odd Christmas present or some gag gift, it seems to end up here in Ithaca on a shelf somewhere. You know how you buy interesting pieces of “artwork” while on vacation and then decide that you have nowhere to put it? Well, that too has found its way onto the walls here in Ithaca. Twenty-five years is a long time and we have managed to accumulate quite a potpourri of oddities that would make even Ripley wonder if he believed it or not. Add to that the dubious distinction awards that one accumulates, especially by trying to do good things of service to one’s Alma Mater as I have done. Cornell must have its own basement full of junk that it doesn’t know how to rid itself of, so it puts a plaque on it and give it to a hard-working alumnus as something that he or she must then decide how to dispose of in years to come.
As I look around this house and carriage house, both inside and outside, I run across things that I cannot for the life of me remember how I obtained them. It’s one thing if you have a prized possession and you can remember the exact moment of creation or collection, but there are items here that I could puzzle over for a log time and not adequately determine their origin. Having been divorced twice and split up household goods both times (usually not very much in my favor in terms of volume of goods), I can more or less determine which era an item came from. I am staring at this moment at a piece of wall art that is a triptych of trees/shrubs done in green on white. I know it came from my first marriage and that probably means that I bought it somewhere in New England, an area we used to frequent, and for some reason liked it enough (while it was obviously not liked enough by my ex-wife) to save it and give it a place on the wall up here. By that calculus, that item is about forty-five years old even though it could be sold in a boutique in Litchfield, Massachusetts to this day as something fresh and new. In some ways, since it has not made the shortlist for me or any of my children, I hope it finds its way into some antique store and gets sold to someone who appreciates its aesthetic as much as I have over the years whenever I paused to notice it.
There are other items that are not so kindly remembered. I see a pair of glass candleholders on top of the glassware cabinet that were given to Kim and me by one of her old theater friends. It so happens that that particular theater friend is not so much a friend any more since politics has taken a strange turn and made her far too red than we can stand. She was always a bit “kookalacka” as Kim would say, and when she gave us those candlesticks as a thank you for allowing her to use the house during a local theater gig, we looked at each other with that all-knowing expression couples have that says, “We hate it, but act like its lovely”. they are now in the unclaimed list of items that will get sent off for resale again at some boutique or antique store. Their very nature make it harder for me to imagine them finding a good home and more likely ending up the butt of some “pass the trash” joke among a group of regifting friends.
There is also a strange size component to the decision of what comes with me or goes. If the item is too big or too small it suffers equally in being left behind. I have a huge 6’x4’ curio picture that contains all the memorabilia from the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. I and my entire family attended most of that series of sporting events and at the time I had a house out there that could easily absorb such a large piece of personal art. Besides old event tickets, photographs and neck lanyards, displayed in a pleasing geometry, there is a front page picture from USA Today of my daughter Carolyn with her face painted like the American flag, which she did in honor of attending a big USA v. Russia hockey game. One does not often make the front page in life, so that small part of the collection is worth saving, but the rest is just too damn big to do anything with. On the other hand, I have a small 3”x3” picture frame in the dining room that is of a stamp of some pine trees in the winter. It is called “Winter Charm”, handwritten on the back along with a date of 1992. I remember where I was in 1992, but for the life of me I have no idea where that lovely little picture came from. I wish I could keep it, but it strikes me as too small to bother with. Strangely enough, if it was a bit larger I probably would have decided to keep it. Now I am left to cajoling one of my kids into taking it as a sweet piece to hang on some odd little space somewhere in their home…to be wondered about again at some future distant time and place. I certainly understand why large items must get jettisoned, but am unclear why small things should get lost in the shuffle.
Most of the furniture in this house has lasted amazingly well for 26 years. That is even more amazing to me since I bought it all in one pass through a discount furniture warehouse somewhere between here and Cooperstown on a day-trip with a long-lost local decorator called Lou who helped me furnish the place in quick order. I remember in 1996 just walking through the warehouse with her pointing to this and that and having movers put it all on a truck for same day delivery. Almost none of that larger furniture is of interest to me or any of my kids. Oldest son Roger and his wife Valene are taking a few furniture items since they have a new larger home, but furniture just doesn’t seem to have much currency in today’s modern world, so it will probably all end up in an estate sale that leaves the pieces to be bought by some graduate student for their apartment. Soft items like sofas often don’t change hands in New York City due to the bedbug plague, but that is likely less of a concern in a college town like Ithaca.
We have a large built-in bookshelf in the study that is filled with odd books and trinkets. The trinkets and books that mean something to me have already been packed away, but they were few and the shelves are still filled with lots of stuff that is unclaimed as yet. Books are quickly becoming curio items and are largely anachronistic. I rarely read a book any more unless its on Kindle or in audiobook form. The books on those shelves take three forms. There are the old college textbooks, which hold little or no value and almost no sentimental value to me. I remember my friend Frank, a guy who is a Marshall Scholar, making a presentation of a prized economics text to my oldest son Roger, who literally didn’t have a clue what to do with it. I feel that exact same way about all of my old textbooks and have no intention of burdening my children with my memorabilia, especially in book form. The next category of books are on topics that were of interest to me in my carer and were thus given to me, often signed, by the author. As an author myself, I adhere to the concept that the most valuable books are those which are NOT signed since we all sign so many. I have little need for any of those since these are minor authors and not works of great art. The last category are paperbacks. Remember those? Well, they weren’t of much value then and are of less value now, so those will get sold by the yard.
All of this thought and work are geared to one thing, taking apart a home piece by piece. At some point, I do not know exactly when, a home ceases to be a home and it just becomes another house with leftover stuff in it. I am at that point with this place right now. This house is returning to being just a house to me.