A lot of good stuff
“Dad, do you want this horse head?” Thomas asked.
A wooden horse head. Just what I always wanted. Everyone should have one.
“It has a hook on it,” he said. “You could hang it from a wall.”
That reminded me of the scene in “The Godfather” where the horse head ends up in the bed of the director who won’t cast Don Corleone’s godson Johnny Fontaine in a movie. Let’s say I mount the horse head, now spray-painted black, on the wall, and somebody comes in unaware and turns on the light. That could be a screamer.
We were having this conversation because Thomas was cleaning out his room. He moved out a long time ago but some of his stuff from previous iterations stayed. Stuff staying is the story of families and children everywhere.
You never know but odds are, he may not be returning soon except for dinner. He and Alicia have their own house now and in a month are getting married. Alicia loves horses but brown wooden horse heads not quite as much.
Funny, natural really, how we still refer to the rooms the kids lived in as their rooms. Partly, it’s for identification purposes — Thomas’ room, Katie’s room — as if they were national parks, but it’s also a way of preserving the memories. There was a family here once. We can prove it. Let me show you.
Katie’s long blue graduation gown from high school still hangs in the closet. I’m not sure what the strategy is but I’ve decided to put off the subject of its removal with Katie’s mother indefinitely and perhaps permanently.
Joining the blue gown in the “do not touch” category are the programs from the plays in junior theater in which Herbie appeared —”The Hobbit,” “Pinocchio,” “Peter Pan” and his Academy Award-winning performance, still talked about to this day, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Also there’s a framed photo from The Californian of Herbie wearing plastic red horns and the caption reading “At the age of 2, youngsters can be their mama’s little angel one minute. The next minute, they seem to have sprouted horns and a tail.”
Sam left not a trace. Probably a good thing. At one point his room was painted black. Picasso had his blue period and Sam’s was of a darker shade. He moved toward the light a long time ago. Two kids and a good wife will do that.
What do you do with the stuff (because you have choices)? It seems harsh to expunge all evidence of their childhoods but if you don’t, it’s like having a wax museum or one of those houses at Pioneer Village that go back 150 years with everything intact. You almost expect somebody to walk into the kitchen and start a fire in order to boil water for tea made with wild acorns.
On Thomas’ bed are the books and possessions that have made the cut and will be moved, sometime, to their new house. Books include “How to be a Gentleman” by John Bridges and “A Gentleman Dresses Up,” “American Psycho” (in which a gentleman probably does not dress up) and Cormac Mccarthy’s “The Road” (whose characters are decidedly not gentlemen).
There’s a Clayton Kershaw bobblehead, a leather whiskey flask, two mixing bowls, a black Stetson, a soft orange blanket with pictures of horses on the back stretch and an orthopedic elbow sleeve Thomas thought about throwing away but I advised him not to because he too could have elbow problems one day.
His clothes are gone from the black dresser and only hangers remain in the closet. The bulletin board has pushpins stuck in but the photos that were pinned to the cork have been packed and put away.
Nothing to be sad about, and no one is. It would be like mourning the Bakersfield Sound, when that disappeared about 30 years ago.
It’s not like stuff matters anyway. When people live in a room for a long time, you can still hear their voices. The voices aren’t always happy and peaceful but neither is growing up. They were often sweet and those are the voices we will remember.