Russian Nesting Doll effect. This adequately describes my mom's estate. Open one thing, another pops out. And another.
We done?
Nope. Keep twisting. There's one more in there—at least.
This effect extends beyond her shoe collection. She had collections of… everything. Even the intangible business side of things just keeps going.
Not to mention the emotional toll.
Lots of layers of little dolls.
Once in a while I'll hit the end of the line to an untwistable little lady. Then, like those old Oxy Clean infomercials… But wait! There's more! Yet another grinning girthy girl with who-knows-how-many more gals tucked inside.
I've been trying to take days away from these. Or half days at least, because it's too much.
One of those days was recently spent with Travel Buddy Bestie (the one who's freaked out by white vans and doesn't like to take me to prissy places) who's helped at Mom's several times for hours at a time.
We decided to swap days. Since she's sold her house and must clear out ASAP, this provides a fine opportunity for me to even things up a bit.
What I was told I'd be doing: Basement totes to storage.
I can do that. That box. Up those stairs. To that SUV. And to that building. Repeat.
Brainless, emotional work on my part is what my Couch Lady has literally ordered.
Any Russian Nesting Dolls of Chaos in this cleanout are not my chaos to hold.
I arrive at her house, ready to go.
Her hubs meets me in the driveway. "You may just want to keep on goin' up the road."
I thought he was joking.
He was not.
Then he left.
Remember what I was told? Cool, inside basement cleanout?
Nope. No storage unit is available, so super hot one-car garage onto pickup truck and trailer. Okay. I'm flexible. (Sometimes…)
"He said he got it all emptied out," Bestie tells me as we stand in the middle of the garage, gauging where to start.
"Then why's the ladder still down?"
I scale the rickety folding wooden rungs and try to use a phone flashlight. I know there's stuff up there, but I can't see what, just vague shapes.
Does it stay with the home? Does it go to their new place? Is it garbage? Did I just walk into the rat's nest of a relationship brouhaha because what's up there stays in his opinion but not hers?
Yes, as it will turn out. Yes to all of this.
Bestie finally finds the light switch.
I call out what I see from the rungs, not fully committing to the idea of crawling around up here. My glasses are already sliding down my nose from the sweat. I don't think this would've happened in the basement.
"Oooh. Yeah. I want that. I can fix that thing. I can sell those other things. That's not cleaned out at all…"
She stays downstairs. I go up and start dragging things to the ladder to drop down to her.
Shop vac missing a caster.
A vintage metal bed frame. In pieces.
Dog crate. Also in pieces.
(Maybe whatever slept in that bed escaped from that crate…)
A koi pond liner?
And five—yes, five—cast iron tractor seats hooked to heavy steel supports, once used as pool-side seating.
I'm unable to stand upright. My right shoulder finds the rafters—all of them, repeatedly—as I drag the items from the far end of the attic across to the access.
An army of squirrels had great joy playing with their nuts up here.
I'm dodging ankle-twisting walnut shells as I haul heavy, dusty, dirty things and drop them down to her.
I told myself not to drop them on her.
"You remember that swapping days thing?"
At this point, I pause to breathe and talk my glasses into staying on my face. I should hand them down to her for safekeeping, but I need them to dodge the nuts, and she's way too excited about these tractor seats to pay attention to small details like glasses.
I should dry the glasses on my shirt, but there’s no clean spot. Shorts either.
I go on, noting the look she's shooting up at me. She knows where I'm going with this. "You remember how I had you sorting things at Mom's? Like socks. From a dresser. Granted, there were bags and bags and bags of socks, but they were clean socks, so far as I knew."
I look down at my arms and legs. Nut dust and squirrel dander cake me, and I'm only halfway through dragging tractor parts.
Tractor. Parts.
"And closets of shirts with tags still on them. All clean. Indoors. Air conditioning."
I had felt bad (and super grateful) that she'd spent so much time helping. I was happy to give her a few days of labor, but…
Dander of Squirrel.
Dust of Nuts.
Parts a’ la Tractor.
"I've not been this dirty in a decade. The last time was Mud Wars with the kids. This is not an even swap."
She nods. She knows. It's uneven. She tells me she loves me.
I know she does.
She knows she owes me another Russian Nesting Doll Day at my mother's. Or three. Oooh. Keep twisting. Yup. A couple of more…
After the attic was really cleaned out, we went to the horse barn.
Horse. Barn.
"This is farm life." She thinks she's giving me a valuable new experience as we unhitch and then reattach the misbehaving trailer so we can load another round of Russian Nesting Dolls.
"I never asked to live on a farm."
I asked to be a writer.
In air conditioning.
On a cushy chair.
Perhaps a feline overlord crew.
No squirrel dander.
No nut dust.
No tractor parts.
At the end of the day, I go home dirty and worn out. I realize, aside from my rant in the attic about the sock sort, I hadn't thought much about my problems. I was too busy dodging nuts—and taking orders from one.
And I've stored away enough "farm life" sensory detail to feed to Little Miss Muse when the time comes for us to sit down at the keyboard for a stretch of fiction writing.
Including what it feels like to impale one's calf on a trailer hitch.
