Connections: Too Much
For all that I love my old house, and show it off when I can, it’s a burden that sometimes feels like it is getting away from me.
Take, for example, the window screens. They had been replaced by the storm windows before this week’s snowstorm, but were left outdoors because I hadn’t figured out where to put them after the 18th-century barn in which they used to be stored was taken down and hauled off to be restored (eventually to be put up on the East Hampton Historical Society’s Mulford Farm grounds). Modern screen-and-storm combinations with metal frames may be easier to handle — you don’t have to keep switching them out, twice a year — but I just don’t think they belonged on an old house like ours. Right now, the wood-framed screens sit outside as the snow melts, leaning in a stack against the side of an exterior wall.
In the meantime, a new set of family treasures has been brought in from a now-vacated family apartment in Manhattan, joining all our regular furnishing,s which, as I like to say, “came with the house” (that is, are family inheritances from earlier generations). As the eldest of five siblings, my husband somehow wound up his family’s keeper of myriad random objects, from pre-Victorian silver-lusterware tchotchkes (anyone need a pepper shaker in the shape of Toby Philpott?) to heavy mahogany furniture (an Empire couch with no home). I’m not complaining about this abundance —but decisions have to be made.
On Friday, before the blizzard came, the movers arrived from the city apartment, toting in not only numerous chairs, including a rocker, and a few other pieces of furniture, but carton after carton of my husband’s paper files, books, and CDs and cassettes. Not to mention artwork and odd assorted white elephants, like the purple-sparkle clock with dice instead of numbers and the words “Las Vegas Time!” on its face, which has already been offloaded onto a 9-year-old grandchild. All of this was dispersed to various parts of the house, where much of it remains in boxes while we ponder what to do. The heavy, slightly rusted filing cabinet remains in the living room.
I’m not surprised that I was overcome with what might be called compulsive house-itis. I just couldn’t deal, as the kids say. I turned my attention away from all that was newly arrived and instead went about straightening drawers and closets that I haven’t seen the back of in decades. Why on earth did I choose to start thumbing through two fat files of recipes from the 1980s, which had been shoved under a kitchen counter? Maybe because it was a project that could be managed and finished quickly.
The fact that we emptied our dear old barn before the carpenters came to dismantle it had been almost a miracle. But it was necessary and got done. When it comes to the house, there is no such outside pressure, and I’m beginning to get worried that all of this will just sit where it is, gathering dust, as weeks turn into years. Some day, perhaps, we will organize a family work gang to go through the cellar, the attic, the storeroom, and all the closets, making decisions about what to keep where, what to give away, or, heaven forfend, throw out. Till then, I am just going for a nice walk. The sun has cleared away almost all the snow.