The Material Remembers

The Material Remembers

The wall reached out excitedly to touch me with a careful caress … then, the carpet and closet joined in for a chorus of hello. The windows whispered a greeting; the kitchen vibrated from floor to ceiling as I passed by; all the particles of the whole place appeared to come alive as if they wanted to embrace me in the molecules of their own memory.

It had been 40 years since I lived there in that house. Not much had changed, except me. Yet outwardly not a moment had elapsed since I had lived there while I was still young, happy, clueless of my future, and content with my cuddly cat, Frosty.

Yes, I saw Frosty there too. Everywhere. In the kitchen where I gently stroked her fluffy fur with a wire brush each morning as she ate a treat; by the front window where she sat patiently waiting for me, swishing her tail to and fro; on the cool counter tops where she would jump up for a slice of cheese; at the front door, daring not to go a step further than the cushioned threshold. Every room held a flash of recall and those flashes flooded through me with a passionate potency.

The material remembers.

I went back so I could remember – everything that happened there – how I felt, what I heard, saw, smelled, all the senses remembering everything unfolding as if it were happening all over again. I was back there in time and saw all the events and things and people and details surrounding events that occurred decades earlier.

Even more incredulous as I drove from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale, on my way to catch a cruise ship in Miami, was the premonition that my old house would be for sale right now. How could I know that? I had a certain thought and visualized a “for sale” sign out in the front yard. Certain enough that I planned ahead to pretend to be a buyer and arrange to tour my old place – before I had any inkling that my intention would pan out. Merely a pipe dream to pass the time as I drove, idle thoughts to wile away endless highway. 

It wouldn’t hurt to drive by and have a look. I usually did that anyway when I went back by Fort Lauderdale, just to see the house and remember my life back then. There were favorite restaurants to stop and have a bite, too.

When I lived there as a hopeful young lady, I had luscious long hair and a trim slender figure. Always tanned and toned from lounging in my backyard pool, my humble being yet unabated by lessons of a longer existence. I laughed a lot, dated different men, and sipped life through a straw of sugar coated experiences. I liked to dress up, go to disco bars, and float on a large raft at the beach near Oakland Park Blvd. I shopped at the brand new Pompano Fashion Square (so hip and cool back then), and bought boxes of Florida oranges at one of those ubiquitous roadside fruit stands located across from the shopping mall. On weekends I loved going to the largest flea market anywhere, which took up 10 drive-in movie screen lots (remember those?!), and I started collecting little things I loved, but didn’t need; an unfortunate habit.

Happy. I knew happy and didn’t know then that happy would take a hiatus, even a permanent hike away from me forever. Maybe that’s part of the reason I keep returning. To remember happy.

The blessings of bliss, covered in youthful carelessness, dancing to the music soundtracks of mindful living. As a young lady on my own, living in the moment didn’t require a conscious correction or Buddha-seeking sojourns. Now came naturally, as it often does before we hit the adult wall of worry.

Here I come again, I thought, after 40 years…. I turned down the street, left off of Commercial Boulevard, and from afar saw the sign: FOR SALE. Just as I had envisioned it. For Sale. My heart skipped a small beat and my soul bowed in acknowledgement to whatever source shows me the way – always.

Pulling into the circular driveway to stop and write the agent’s phone number, a woman came out from the house and walked to my car with a wave.

“Hi!” I greeted her. “Are you the agent?”

“No,” she said. “I’m the owner. How can I help you?”

“May I see the house?”

“Absolutely! I’d be delighted to show you around if you have some time right now. It’s a beautiful home.”

I already know that, I mused to myself…. I already know every nook and cranny of that house, but sure! Show me!

She babbled about this room or that view or new tiles, and I tuned her out to sink into my own sensorial soliloquy and simply feel my way back to the way back.

The moment we walked in, inanimate objects reached for me, each with their own tales to tell, each with a record long ago filed, but never forgotten. I stood amazed at the details flooding into my mind and the scenes replayed from every corner of every room.

Everywhere I looked I saw my furnishings, my pictures on the walls, my things exactly where they once were.

I had orange and white fleecy furniture; very fashionable and very Florida; hippie décor during hippie days. There was the night I cried on the furry couch, because a boyfriend broke up with me. And the friend who lounged in the sloped furry chair – over there….

In the bedroom I remembered the night my brother called the police because I fell asleep and dropped the phone to the floor in the middle of an apparently unimportant to me, late-night conversation. He didn’t know what had happened and the police broke into my bedroom window to rescue me from my sweet dreams, scaring me half to death with their noise and the bright flashlights. Funny now, in recall, but frightening and embarrassing then. That’s the first memory that popped into my mind when I peered into the same bedroom. That and then the clothes that populated the side closet.

We walked into the backyard and there, under the bluest sky and bright summer sun, beckoned my beautiful pool. Still the same configuration, I noticed, still the same four steps at the shallow end and still the very deep side with a diving platform – and still the pretty yard and partitioned fence to separate nosy neighbors.

There’s where I shot my first modeling job for Jordan Marsh, I ruminated as I peered around the house to see the velveteen lawn still exactly the same.

There’s the patio where I played games with friends; there’s the pretty palms I planted! Still there and look how tall they are!

We walked back through the house for a final glimpse of what is now a $430,000 house. $430,000!? Once upon a time, it cost $69,000. If only I’d known … if only we all knew now what we didn’t know when.

It sparked me to consider how remarkable and lovely it remains; to learn that everything is and always will be still there for me. A reflection of perfection from my past. I left a long time ago, but my house and my beloved pet, Frosty, never left me. Not for a second.

The material remembers.

And so do I.

Just Another Lori Story 

Moonlight Dragonfly

Moonlight Dragonfly

Clearing Mary’s estate was a massive undertaking. It made climbing Mt. Everest seem like a cakewalk. Not that I ever climbed Mt. Everest, but imagining the trek could not be nearly as difficult as selling, sorting, and designating every single item from every single space, upstairs, downstairs, outside and inside, overhead and underneath, from Mary’s house. I wouldn’t call Mary a hoarder, but beyond the average collector, she didn’t leave any surface empty. Plus she had lived there over fifty years and one does amass an enormous amount of stuff if one stays put and never parts with anything, yet continues to collect.

She left everything to her grandchildren and I remember when the grandson contacted me about the possibility of helping them, that his wife wept openly about how hard going through everything had been and they could not begin to know how to go about liquidating a lifetime’s worth of goods, both valuable and worthless at the same time.

As an estate sale specialist, I had come highly recommended and it meant more to them that I had known Mary as my neighbor and would undoubtedly serve their needs with special care and consideration.

In fact Mary was a favorite neighbor. She was a wise woman and the first one to introduce herself to me when I moved in many years before. We became close and she stood as my advocate through many battles with an atrocious association that represented the worst of condominium living – the kind you hear horrible tales about.

We both liked art and antiques and I enjoyed hearing Mary’s stories of childhood growing up in the South, her many adventures as a bailiff in the county court, and learned a lot from her about her personal research into the mystical, astrology, and all things woo-woo. 

Her beliefs were odd yet interesting. She could read a person very quickly and by their mannerisms or expressions tell their sign, or birth order, or any number of not important, yet quite revealing details that stripped that individual of any cloudy intentions. Her bookcases brimmed over with books about every kind of occult, magical, science, psychology, astronomy, afterlife and other publications pertaining to exploration of people and possibilities, both future and past. It wasn’t at all unusual for her to ask someone soon after meeting them, “What sign are you?” or to identify their secrets to them without even needing to ask that oft avoided inquiry.

So it was with great care that I took on the monumental task of clearing her house and touching every single thing that she had owned and deciding how to dispose of it properly. Unlike other estate sales I had organized, this time was personal. I cared more. Things mattered more. I loved Mary and if everything she believed in meant she was indeed watching over me and this process, then I meant to do the very best in her honor and memory.

The stars aligned (or Mary interceded and aligned them for me) and all the right people happened out of nowhere to buy her belongings. There was an inordinate amount of art that I knew very little about. An art dealer showed up. There was tons of silver as Mary treated herself royally and ate with real sterling utensils and kept fine silver place settings and matching pieces. I found a trusted silver dealer who paid fair for it all. There were too many books to count, and a book dealer did all the heavy lifting and carted them away for decent dollars. And so on….

A charity needed the washer and dryer. A neighbor bought a table. The rugs sold at an antique show. The little stuff went to a little stuff dealer. Little by little the mountain that had been Mary dwindled to a manageable amount of items left. Soon it was over. Much sooner than I had anticipated and we made much more money than I could have imagined also. The clients were ecstatic with the results and my satisfaction in pleasing them, and hopefully Mary, soared to meet the fulfilled expectations.

Finally her house was empty. Really empty. Spacious in view of all that had left the premises.

I walked over one winter night and went inside one last time to make sure everything was gone and the house had been cleaned for the new owners. I rang her bell one last time (she had an antique turnstile bell that was always a joy to ring) as a fond memory of all our visits and used my loaned key to go inside. The electricity had been shut off and it smelled fresh. Though it was somewhat dark, I wandered from room to room double-checking from floor to ceiling and simply remembering Mary.

The last room was her upstairs bedroom. I looked up to see a dusty ceiling fan, but otherwise there was nothing left and I stopped for a moment to think of her deeply and wonder where she was at that moment and if she could see me … I know Mary believed in that sort of stuff and what if it were possible? How would I know? I wouldn’t until I made it to the other side and Mary was already there so if there was any chance of communication, now was the time to wonder about it and stop to feel….

I silently said a prayer for her and stopped to ask into thin air if she was satisfied with what I had done for her heirs? I spoke aloud then, since no one was around anyway, and wondered if she could really hear me? I asked her, “Mary, if you’re really still here and if you really can hear me, show me a sign, some sign, anything, maybe something left behind, something I forgot, or let me hear you in some way….” It felt foolish and spiritual and necessary – for us both – at least in that moment. I knew Mary believed in this stuff and she had encouraged me to believe too. Even though I had been through the place a dozen times and I knew nothing had been left or forgotten, I still asked for her blessing.

I didn’t hear anything. The house grew quieter. And darker.

I turned to leave and noticed the moonlight shining brightly through the window from the bedroom across the hall. I smiled. It was a pretty night and the moon glowed in gladness. That was enough, I thought.

Then I saw something sparkle from the carpet in that room. A glittery twinkle on the floor near the baseboard in an otherwise empty room. There could be nothing there I reasoned; probably the moon’s light flickering against the recently revealed wall where Mary’s books had stacked for years.

I walked inside and there! It was large for an ornament. A bronze dragonfly with a very old piece of twine had caught the light of the moon and morphed out of nowhere to rest lightly on the carpet. As big as a hand, how could we possibly have missed this piece? I picked it up and smiled up at the moon from the window. The dragonfly was beautiful and I knew we didn’t miss it at all.

It was Mary’s message to me.

Just Another Lori Story

The Restraining Order

The Restraining Order

The judge bellowed from the bench set high above the courtroom so as to separate his meanness from the rest of us and so that if you looked up at him too long your neck crooked in such a way that his bark became bite.

The poor petitioners' that dared misuse pronouns or lacked proper proof of their claims were summarily dismissed in rapid succession and left the court with their heads bowed low, and some whimpered wantonly.

Everyone came to court this day seeking a restraining order. A protective order to protect them from some fear or stalking or other offense requiring legal restraint, but this judge brutalized most plaintiffs worse than the defendants they were there to get away from.

What the hell am I doing here? I asked myself from the front row where I purposely picked a seat close up so I could hear everything that happened and hope to learn a thing or two. What I learned early on in the day was that I would be lucky to get out of there with my ego intact, let alone a judgment in my favor. There were 31 cases on this judge's calendar. I was number 29.

No one was winning. Every case presented had a particular flaw or the judge was just having a horrendous day reflected in his horrible mood. I couldn't tell which from witch. And the cases were horrific – mostly family court kind of drama; baby mamas and reality television sort of craziness. This one beat this one up, and that one broke visitation rules, and another one calls and calls, and so on.... The judge, unmoved, moved to dismiss one after the other, but not before scolding them into oblivion for their own misfortunes and misrepresentations.

Way down the line, someone won! Wow – a ray of dismal hope. Still, one out of 17 cases is not a score to count on for success.

So why was I there?

Because I had had enough. Unfamiliar with stalking or harassment or laws about similar crimes, I had put up with an unwanted individual for nearly a decade. Annoyances, “things” left at my house, comments (shouts, really, but I'm being nice), a whole host of unwanted and unwarranted overtures from a person I wanted to only leave me alone. Cameras had been put up at my home per police suggestion, and I ignored this person despite the botheration because I felt certain that if I ignored long enough it would stop.

It did not.

Ultimately, a violation of vandalism provoked me to this court. The last straw in a long sequence of last straws.

This person had bothered me into this courtroom where a blustery judge was beating up those that had already been beaten down.

~

It made me think of Him.

The person I thought of as a dear friend that had become alienated and distant and I didn't know why.

Nowadays there's a term for it, I learned recently. It's called “ghosting.”

When someone you love or someone you thought you knew well, or had a relationship with, or a friendship, suddenly ignores you. Doesn't return calls, letters, emails, any messages at all. Simply disappears off your radar and out of your reality. It's painful at best and viciously vacuous of the other person who doesn't have the courage to communicate in some way (in any way!), what for or why they have decided to delete you from their life.

Recently, someone I've been great friends with for 30 years (30 dang years!) did this ghosting thing to me and it stings and it makes no sense whatsoever. So much for great friends who turn out to be not so great.

But, back to Him....

I didn't do anything wrong that I was aware of, but I sure missed my friend and had made several attempts to contact him by email or phone, but when he didn't return my reaching out, I stopped. What choice did I have?

All I could do was wonder what I did to deserve denial. I had no answers. Life is like that sometimes.

On his birthday, just to honor him, I dropped off some special soup he liked at his office, but he wasn't there and I was glad about that, actually. I never heard anything from him afterward.

The coworker I left the soup with was a friend to me and she called to tell me not nice things about the way He accepted or rather accentuated his distress about the benign Birthday blessing: He Raged.

“Really?” I asked.

Yes. Really.

She tattled that He scolded her for accepting anything from me, said that I was “stalking” him; that he had a “restraining order” on me already … he fumed furiously at her for – well, for what? For me bringing him a bowl of soup when he wasn't even there?

Apparently. Yes.

From the way this coworker claimed He carried on, you would think I had sent him a tantric sex tutorial or something --- rather than some soup!

I was devastated.

Furthermore, I had no idea what the truth was. Either she misunderstood Him, or exaggerated, or flat-out lied, or He really said that, or something like that, in which case HE flat-out lied … since obviously I would know if someone had a restraining order against me.


(And if He truly did have the nerve to tell her that terrible lie, then I would like him to know that it's not so easy to get a restraining order....)

One of them lied. And I will never know which one.

~

So here we are back in the battleground of this jurisprudence jungle when Judge Jerk jerks me from my daydreaming of this person's disrespectful disavowing by bellowing my case number and name for the second time into the now near empty courtroom.

I gathered my documents and the last of my wits about me and approached the bench.

Fortunately for me, I had a police detective as a witness and supporter – in case I felt the need to commit my own crime against humanity and attack this offensive magistrate who might mangle his obligation to do justice and grant me my order.

Only one other case had won. (In case you're keeping score, that makes two).

No, it wasn't easy. He scolded me too. Just like all the others. Cut me off, sliced me up, and severed my common sense from the rest of any sense, while he ceremoniously circumvented my well-documented years of struggles with the offending defendant, but … and this is BIG … mostly the judge scolded me for putting up with it for so long! He asked my police detective pointed questions (with respect, of course, for the law abiding uniformed officer) and then rightfully signed off on a restraining order.

Petition Granted. I Won!

That makes three.

Only 3 out of 31 won their case that day.

I didn't care that the judge decimated my verve, only that I would avoid more otherwise unavoidable encounters with the offender.

I left the court with my head held high. I survived a hanging judge! Victory tastes delicious. That person would not be able to bother me again, without going to jail.

~

But it wasn't until I got to my car that the dam of pent-up emotions collapsed away from the strong foundation I'd faked all day in court. The tears felt like a betrayal of my anger, clung and then dropped from the edge of my jawbone. I drove home, the day's events reviewing through the peculiar mind that is mine, with the pressure of the operose process upending me in a peculiar way....

I burst into torrential tears, wailing in recognition that someone, Him, felt that same way about me:

That's the way He feels … if He really said I was stalking him … if He really spoke of a restraining order … He wants me to disappear … He's angry … He feels threatened … has fear ... This is the lesson and why I had to go through all of this … so I would know how HE feels … about ME!

The spokes of karma are powerful. Do unto others, and all that … what is done to us, we may be doing to others, just as what we don't want done to us, we shouldn't do to others.

I'll never know what was said about me between those two – the one who tattled; the one who rattled – I'll never know the truth.

But I know I got badly hurt. And there's no restraining order to protect my heart from the hurt I got. From someone I loved.

Just Another Lori Story

BuZZworthy

Buzzworthy

Why did a wasp wedge its skinny striped self into my shoe by the door? Isn’t there some kind of code between bees and human inhabitants? Shouldn’t he have at least buzzed his presence before I slid an unsuspecting and tired foot into what I thought was my shoe? Let me assure you, when a wasp wants it, your footwear is not yours anymore!

A quick errand to the supermarket started the stinging affair. Who thinks of checking a shoe? Not me … but that policy is now revised.

As I hurriedly slipped on the right shoe, I felt what I thought was a little pebble, a stony bumpy thing. I took off and shook the shoe, but nothing rolled out, so I slipped it back on and started out the door.

Again! A “thing”, what is that?  pressed hard against my sole, but I pushed forward toward the door. Bad idea, because then the hard annoying thing burned! Until I understood I had been stung, it felt like a red-hot rock burning!

I flung off the shoe and there he was, gasping his last little bee breath.

Apparently, the weight of my wrath did not settle well around the waspy invader.

Panicked, I sat down and saw the welt growing larger on my foot bottom, as the fright mounted inside me, and I rubbed and watched it turn red and swell fast and furious.

I may be allergic and I don’t know what kind of bee bit me, but more importantly, what if I couldn’t walk? 

Adrenaline coursed through my veins at an alarming rate. I could feel my heart beat faster and my blood pressure spike from fear.

Because he stung the bottom of my foot, callused soul skin saved me. (A case for “thick skin” and sparse pedicures if I ever heard one!)

Once, I got stung on my fleshy arm and had to go to the hospital because the swollen lump grew so large and my breathing changed to challenging. That’s when I found out I am allergic to bee stings. But maybe only certain kinds of bees….

As it turns out, my little bee buddy didn’t get a good bite. I probably scared him more than he scared me.

We both limped away.

Me stung.

Him stunned.                       

I lived.

He died.

Just Another Lori Story