sold

when i was young, my grandparents used to come and visit from ottawa. maybe they came once a year, usually at christmastime, though i can't be entirely sure. i remember counting down the days until they left from about the time they arrived. they would fly into town into a house filled, or so it now seems, with my childhood anticipation. i loved my grandparents; my grandmother, especially. but thinking back, i wasn't so good at sustaining the pleasure of their company. i was always more concerned with endings than with beginnings. so when they touched down for the week-long-or-maybe-more visits, i enjoyed them for a day or so, then started thinking about how sad i would be once they left. when they finally did, i was, as i had expected, truly sad that they were gone, but also relieved that the waiting game was over. even then, i was queen of the long goodbye. you'd think i would have outgrown that with my baby fat. alas, i'm missing only the latter.

for a long time now, i've been scrapping with my mother's condo. it's been a bit like a prize-fighter, this property, full of legal left-hooks and uppercuts, and it's been refusing, almost valiantly, to go down for the count. but now it seems like we're in the final round and i'm the one that's going to claim the belt. eight and a quarter years later. i mean, i should touch wood there; god knows there's been enough twists and turns and hurdles to trip even the nimblest of souls (of which i am not one). but last night, my sister called with the news that we had two offers in on it. we took the higher. and i'll know for sure next tuesday if it all goes through.

i thought i would be relieved. after so many setbacks, after jumping through so many hoops - this is what it was all for. and yet i realized last night, as i looked for sleep to win out over grief, that the condo - as much i've cursed it, ignored it, imagined hungrily the day when it would be out of my hair - has been a kind of dam against the full swell of loss.

i suppose there was part of me that hung on to it as the backdrop to memory. if the set had not yet been torn down, maybe the show could still go on. access to the space, however hypothetical, gave me the cues to remember the lines. different scenes blocked to different floorboards, furniture, walls. my mother, alive, moving through the rooms, making noise, making dinner, making jokes, making arguments, making me feel at home.

when my grandparents came to newfoundland, i focussed so hard on the end of their visit, i lost track of their present company. for the past eight years, i've been focussing so much on the present, i forgot to look at the end. either way, the goodbye became longer than maybe it should have.

so here's to the end of this long goodbye. it's as bittersweet as i remember it.


fleetwood mac - landslide