I spent that year removing seventy years’ worth of flashbacks from the house in gaffer-taped or open-top boxes, and black plastic garbage bags half-filled like under-inflated giant balloons. The flashbacks - old teapots, Leon Uris novels, a pressure cooker, an A-line dress in yellow and orange polished cotton that still had some 1950s sunshine stuck to it, a Gem razor, a wooden-handled chisel - trooped gaily to the car and got in like children going off to a summer camp; rattling and shushing and flipping and clunking on their way to the opportunity shop. Then it was done. Three fourths of a century of junk, each piece with its own little micro-climate of memories, gone. Freed from driving endless boxes of ornaments to second-hand shops (the provenance of much of the junk, it should be pointed out; my mother was an incorrigible collector and hoarder), I relished the freedom of being on foot, diverting the route of my occasional runs to pass the house while it was unoccupied but still u...
Recipes and ruminations from a small house in a big city.