With a slight movement and a handshake…it finishes. Eight excellent years and in a single day, it winds down to empty…with a sigh and a jangling of old, worn keys. The grounded and settled feeling of never moving, of constantly shifting into permanence; this fades, just at the moment when nesting into the very cracks of the wall begins. The cornices and worn rugs belong to me. Then, just at the edge of indecision, the air suddenly shifts and it is once again time to move on. Always upward, always improving, always forward…always better. We take a quick walk through the painted halls, a hand clutches gently around the splintered edges of the attic doorway…old damp stairs and the sealed, dirty window looking out onto the gritty city; those impossibly high kitchen cupboard shelves. We have never used the top shelves.
There is a smudge of candle wax here, the framed outline of a favorite print staring out from an abandoned wall, a stenciled mantle over there and the white stove where so many happy meals bubbled and steamed. Everything stands empty, clean and bereft…alone and awaiting new tenants.
There they are. They wait shiftlessly in the driveway as silly details are discussed…the detritus of city living. Leaving the old and stepping up into the new residence; collecting enough stuff to be a complete nuisance, leaving enough behind to be painful; shedding just enough to be practical…and done. They do not know the life lived here. They have no understanding of the painted walls and the candle gloaming; the strange next door neighbor who waves only when first greeted. They do not know. I do not see them as I stride by. There is no connecting point between us. I do not like what I see and I do not like what I feel. It belongs to them now; whatever they are and will be.
My eight years belong to me. My heart butts up against their new adventure. They do not know and I shall not tell them. They hold the old jangling keys, but they own no entry to my heart…
690 Saint Paul 