Mom and Dad have tried, my mother says,
to contact Mike, the Estate Sale agent. He's
never home, she says on the phone, and I
know she's hedging, but they have been
working, she says, between doctors'
appointments and dentists' appointments.
We spend a lot of time doing that, she
says, and then we have to take naps.
But I've said to your dad we have to
get to work on that room. As an aside
she tells me Mike won't work with us
until we clear out this junk. When Jim
and I stood in the basement surrounded
by the junk, offering to move, remove, sort
through boxes, closets, cupboards under
the dark stairs, they told us Mike would
deal with all of this. Don't get rid
of anything they said Mike said. You'd
be surprised what people will buy.
Reality has shifted under my mother's
words my entire life. She has taken books
to the library, she says. The box was too
heavy, so she put the books in bags
and took them to the library. I pulled out
my shoulder she says, but that's okay.
She has emptied, I realize, that one box
on gramma's maple trestle table
facing the full bookcase she has yet to
touch. The records she thinks of as Lyn's.