My dad's been out of town for a week and my mother--powerless against fifty-plus years of "Thanksgiving + One Day = Christmas" tradition-- called me yesterday morning to ask if I would come over and get the ornaments out of the attic for her.
"I've got the tree up and the lights on it," she said, "I just need the ornaments."
"Sure," I said. "I was going to spend the day fashioning holly wreaths by hand and stringing lights on the house and making four-story gingerbread condos, but I guess I can get ornaments out of your attic first."
"Are you even out of
bed yet?"
"Maybe."
My parents' attic is far more treacherous than I remembered from... all those times I never went up there. It's dark and crowded and you can't walk on the floor, you have to stay on the wooden rafters. My mom kept shouting this up to me from her hand-wringing perch beneath the attic hole, as if I hadn't taken this dire instruction to heart. As if I was interested in collapsing through the drywall and landing on a car. As if I'd forgotten that time my brother tried to get into the house from the garage and fell through the kitchen ceiling. (I really should have just unlocked the door for that kid, hindsight.)
Once I had a stable toe-hold on a rafter and I'd been passed a flashlight I realized that the
attic wasn't crowded at all-- the
attic was a barren tomb. What was
crowded was the three peripheral feet around the attic opening. Apparently our family is
lazy, not
stuff rich. Pile close and abandon. If I hadn't been so concerned about my vanishing legacy of attic stuffs I would have been proud.
Oooh. Hold the phone.
"Hey, Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"There're like four boxes up here marked 'Prussian China'."
"What?"
I got a better foothold, took the flashlight out of my mouth. "'
Prussian China'," I yelled. "With a 'P'."
"Oh yeah," she hollered back. "My mother inherited all of that from her mom. When I die, remember that's up there. It's valuable."
"Mom," I said, "don't talk like that."
"I'm just saying..."
"Seriously, Mom. It's morbid and silly and I can't even think that way."
"I know," and she laughed, "I'm sorry."
I bent double, adjusted my no-fall stance, put the flashlight under my arm and started unpeeling tape with my mouth.
"Right, so can I just have this shit
now?"
No. No, I can't. But I
can have a thirty-seven pound ripped Hefty bag stuffed with Christmas lights! Awesome! I'll just hold onto it until Christmas rolls around in three months and I'll be ahead of the pack.
