the lux­u­ry of the past

Hap­py New Year!

I’ve been hear­ing that one of the 2016 con­cepts to watch is “de-clut­ter­ing.”  Every­one is talk­ing about clear­ing out, purg­ing, sim­pli­fy­ing life, by sim­pli­fy­ing possessions.

Well, as you know all too well, our fam­i­ly did­n’t have the lux­u­ry of wait­ing for a cul­tur­al trend to do all of the above.  Hav­ing moved house nine times in 20 years, this last time scal­ing down to our small­est home ever, we have become pro­fes­sion­al de-clutterers.

We’ve brought with us noth­ing — as William Mor­ris said — that we did not know to be use­ful or believe to be beau­ti­ful.  Which is love­ly, except that nei­ther of those cat­e­gories real­ly admits the pure­ly emo­tion­al belong­ings.  The parts of your life you sim­ply LOVE, with no rhyme or rea­son, no use or aes­thet­ic value.

Which makes Red Gate Farm all the more nec­es­sary to our lives.  All around us are the lux­u­ri­ous ves­tiges of the beloved past.

There is, adorably, this por­tion of the “mea­sur­ing marks door­way” that charts the taller, old­er girls (and one Kai, a boy, last sum­mer).  Then, because Kate and Mol­ly appeared so much lat­er, they have their portion.

I remem­ber how hard I tried not to think about leav­ing behind the “mea­sur­ing marks clos­et” in our Man­hat­tan loft, which we thought in 2000 would be our for­ev­er home.  Avery’s marks from age 4 to age 9 were left behind, there.

We have left so much behind.  When I think of the pho­tographs, the toys, the high school musi­cal cos­tumes, the let­ters from France, the child­hood books, the stuffed ani­mals, records, that my moth­er still valiant­ly holds for me in my child­hood bed­room clos­et!  All these from Avery’s child­hood have been left behind, with friends who had younger daugh­ters, or have been put into stor­age for some lat­er date.  They aren’t part of our dai­ly lives.

Thank good­ness for Red Gate Farm.  We found it when Avery was about sev­en, and there are parts of all our lives left here in pre­cious liv­ing mem­o­ry.  I love every bit.

The nicest thing is that it’s not a memo­r­i­al, or a morgue.  It’s a liv­ing house where kid after kid has loved every bit of it.  Just on New Year’s Eve the doll­house was brought back out.  Because it’s an old house with plen­ty of nooks and cran­nies, things can just LIVE.  Things from the past, filled with mem­o­ries of the fourth birth­day when the doll­house came into our lives.

There is a whole shelf full of pic­ture books, more than one, prob­a­bly, in all the book­shelves scat­tered over this house.  I have read here to Avery, Jane, Mol­ly, Kate-Across-the-Road, Abigail.

On New Year’s Eve, Abi­gail, her par­ents Mike and Lau­ren, and her lit­tle broth­er Gabriel came to din­ner.  Gabriel sat in Avery’s high chair, which has in between housed all the above chil­dren, their sticky fin­gers leav­ing prints to be scrubbed off after every dinner.

The two kids sat with their bowls of choco­late mousse at the table that’s moved with us from Lon­don to New York to Con­necti­cut, a wed­ding present from John’s mom and Dad.

We all sat and observed Lon­don’s New Year’s Eve (at the love­ly hour of 7 p.m. Red Gate Farm time!) in the leather chairs that have come with us from coun­try to coun­try, with the Christ­mas Tree skirt giv­en to us the first hol­i­day we had this house, by my moth­er, embla­zoned “Red Gate Farm.”

The piano is nev­er qui­et here!  Either my broth­er is deft­ly arrang­ing the Peanuts Christ­mas song, or I’m try­ing to mas­ter some Debussy tune, or Jane and Mol­ly are impro­vis­ing a duet with Kate stand­ing ready to take over.  Abby and Gabe have tak­en their places in the tra­di­tion, with Rose­mary’s laugh­ing approval.

Gabriel made the acquain­tance of my beloved hens, whom he chris­tened “cock­adoo­dle­doos.”  We con­vinced him to leave them upstairs in my bed­room so they could get some sleep.  “Or else they won’t lay any eggs,” Abi­gail explained, con­flat­ing once and for all the rel­a­tive iden­ti­ties of roost­ers and hens.

You could walk all through our new Lon­don flat and hard­ly know we had a child, so grownup is it and ele­gant.  But at Red Gate Farm there are pic­tures of lit­tle Avery every­where, sus­pend­ed in a way in child­hood.  It feels right here.

After Christ­mas, we all spent a great deal of ener­gy clean­ing, pol­ish­ing, rear­rang­ing, the belong­ings that crowd this old fam­i­ly house.  Just look how wel­com­ing the music room is, with its fresh coat of attention.

My new felt friends fit right in.

The din­ing room sim­mered on New Year’s Eve with its weight of the new can­dle hold­ers Avery had giv­en me for Christ­mas, and the old ones they joined.  I give you two views, one into the house…

And one toward the front door, await­ing our guests.

I admit that I arrived at this lit­tle house this Christ­mas slight­ly ner­vous that our fam­i­ly’s alle­giance, or atten­tion, or future, had begun to swiv­el to our Lon­don dream home.  And sure­ly we are all very excit­ed about our Lon­don lives, glit­tery as they are.  But at the end of our Red Gate Farm hol­i­day, we all leave just as in love with this house and our lives here as ever before, warmed by the past that we are allowed to have here, and by the future kids who will jump on the tram­po­line and pound on the piano and pore over the pic­ture books just as Avery did.  And rev­el in the warmth and joy of the kitchen, the heart of the home.

Gifts from the past are everywhere.

We’ve said good­bye to Avery, and to my fam­i­ly, and to Rose­mary.  It’s back, very short­ly, to real life.  It is such a heart­en­ing feel­ing, as all the changes hap­pen in our Eng­lish lives, with our grownup child, to know that Red Gate Farm is still here, hold­ing our past and future safe and sound.