Portals & People

My ex-husband has sold the family home. It closes in less than three weeks. I have that much time to get rid of the random memorabilia I left there, plus a bunch of furniture that I picked out years ago. When we divorced, the lawyers made things simple: I got the condo and its contents, Jack got the house and its contents. We didn't spend the weeks putting post-it notes on stuff, claiming what we want, like I imagine what most people do in a divorce. Now Jack is getting rid of everything in the house: stuff goes to the dump, Goodwill, or storage.

I swung by the house two weeks ago before he put the house on the market to scope out what I wanted to take. I hadn't been in the family home since I was ambushed there by Jack's girlfriend exactly three years ago. (Jack started dating his GF about six weeks after I asked for a divorce, but I didn't know she existed until the ambush a year and a half later.) Three years ago, Jack had invited me to swing by the house to pick up some mail. I remember the date vividly because it was the day after the 25th anniversary of Ada's death. 

Again, Jack's timing is perfectly miserable, as he texted me that he sold the family home the day before the anniversary of Ada's death.

Going back to the house a few weeks ago was triggering and emotional. I entered the dusty museum where I raised my kids and I was flooded with memories, both good and horrible. So many things in the house were the same; others were radically different. The backyard garden that was my sanctuary was flattened to dirt. Dirt. All of the grass was gone and only one or two plants remained. The level of neglect and abandonment was devastating, which really should not have been surprising given Jack's lack of attention in the last years of our marriage. All he wanted to do was work and run. Now he has the life he has wished for and wanted. I wish I could say I am happy for him, except I am not. I was collateral damage, not an uninvolved bystander. Intellectually, I know I am better off not being with a man who was too pre-occupied to be a good husband and partner. My heart struggles, remembering Jack before he was so self-absorbed.

The New York Times wrote an article about neuroscientists who confirmed what Marcel Proust wrote about more than a hundred years ago: things from our past are a portal back to that time. Proust ate a madeleine and involuntarily was transported back to his childhood. The New York Times wrote:

Objects can also become cues that activate memories, momentarily bringing them back into focus. One brain-imaging study indicated that past versions of ourselves compress in our minds, similarly to how faraway objects blur in the distance. Holding a hat you used to love activates memories from that past self, creating a portal between who you are now and the person you once were. 

The entire house was a portal to my entire previous life, from my college diplomas to the pine pie safe I bought with my first post-college roommate, Diana. The rug I picked for the dining room, the Madrone coffee table for the living room. Pedro's Lego room hit me pretty hard. He and I spent hours and hours up there, building, sorting and listening to music. It was wonderful and heartbreaking to be there. I sobbed as I looked around, seeing the past, present and future all at the same time.

What is home? For many years, home was a quirky little house on a hill in Ravenna. My downtown condo feels more like a nest than a home, as a home is also people. Home used to be Jack, Claire-Adele, and Pedro.

What is home now? The condo is a beautiful and wonderful place: a friend calls it "The Palace." It is lovely, but it is just Fox and I. My kids are creating their new home, as Jack is creating his. Can my home just be me? 

I guess for now it is. I was the glue that held everything together in my family. What does glue do when there is nothing left to hold?

I still have my kids, in the best sense. I don't have to take care of them on the daily, but I like to talk to them and they like to talk to me. Claire-Adele and I didn't share a Lego room, but she and I travel together, and for that I am grateful. I still have my dad, who has always been my rock.

I remember when Ada died, I was crushed and flattened. Counterintuitively, her death gave me hope. In that pregnancy, I found a capacity to love that I didn't know I had, and that was wonderful, even as it broke my heart. I remember thinking that I lost one person and there are billions of other people on the planet, all who need love.

Richard Rohr says that a heart needs to be broken to let the light in. He's not wrong. 

I just wish it didn't hurt so much.