Head in the Clouds

When clouds are pasted onto the horizon in the still dim light of early dawn, they can look like mountains. As I drove eastward this morning toward the rented townhouse that I have been slowly filling with the stuff I can live without temporarily but cannot leave behind -- a motley collection of coffee mugs, crystal goblets, uncomfortable shoes, cocktail dresses -- I imagined that I was visiting my vacation home. A small chalet, maybe, tucked away from reality on the ledge of a rocky slope.

In a few short weeks, the rented townhouse will be my reality, no longer just a haven where I can escape for a brief visit. The house I have lived in for almost twenty years will be emptied of my stuff and filled with somebody else's. A young child whose name I do not know will sleep where my children once slept, unfamiliar aromas will permeate the kitchen, another woman's jeans will be shrinking in the dryer. The worn molding around the front door will become just something else to repair; it will no longer be a fond reminder of a beloved dog unable to contain his excitement when the UPS guy visits, or a squirrel scurries across the lawn, or when a leaf blows by. Eventually, the insidious puggle hairs that defy vacuuming and settle onto every inch of fabric will dissipate, and all evidence of our life there will be erased.

It's odd. What I love most about the townhouse, my vacation home, is that it is a clean slate. Yet, almost every moment I spend there is spent examining spaces and figuring out where and how my stuff will fit. I travel with measuring tape, I envision still unfurnished rooms configured in ways that will seem familiar. I envision puggle hairs floating through the air, scratched walls, carpet stains with known origins. I imagine faded Pepsi stains on the ceiling from the time my son and his friend decided to see what happens when you boil a soda can, V-8 stains in the bathroom from the time I tried to bathe a skunked dog in the sink. I wonder how long it will take for my blind dog to figure out the path to my bed each night, how I will explain the new bedding that still smells fresh.

Technically, my old house, the one from which I am slowly erasing myself, is not the house where I grew up. I lived in several homes before I landed there, in that house more spacious than any I had ever known, in a suburb I had never intended to live in, living a suburban life I had never really imagined living. In many ways, though, it is the house where I grew up. It is where my family took shape, it is where I started to figure out who I am. It is a place filled with wonderful memories and a place where I learned many lessons, some of them painful, most of them useful. There was life before that house, and I hope there will be much life after that house, but the meat of my story happened there. It is changing hands, and it will soon be spruced up and coated in new paint, but it will always, in some fundamental way, be mine.

My townhouse in the mountains will likely be temporary, as fleeting as the backdrop of jagged cloud formations in the distance this morning. Maybe it will become more than just a pile of brick and mortar to me, maybe it won't. There are no mountains, but there is plenty of new terrain.