E tenebras, lux dormiens

Of the Sadness of Mobility

My cousin, his mother and father, three of whom live quite close to us, moved away last week, to Hercules. It's a town in northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area. It's an hour drive, so I visiting him or he to me is very much in doubt, or very much less frequent than what little that I see of him.

Let this be known as true: I did not really like his hyperactive personality, nor did I enjoy having difficulty communicating with him. I did enjoy having that special attachment that he felt for me and I for him, which are the consequences of the lack of brotherhood. We both share the same pod, which is that we live in one-child households.

He is eight years old. He is young, enthusiastic, disappointed to move away, and excited to move into a house where he has a room of his own. In the previous two-bedroom house, the mother and the father had each a separate and equal room, to do with what they would. Neither was willing to give up their own room. The father's room was messy, unsanitary, uncleanable. There was a fish tank, there was a desk, I think, under all the mess of paperwork, computer parts, and an old medical skull. He is a nurse, not of the attractive kind, and on reserve by the United States Navy.

The mother's room, in contrast, was her workplace. What was there, was simply a computer, a drawer of clothes, and a bookshelf full of, well, books. When my cousin was born to that household, the mother's room overflowed with books on babies, and with baby toys. She works as a business owner, a steady, small accounting firm.

The house in general is messy. What tables there are, of coffees, of dinner, of kitchen cabinets, are teeming not with life but toys, forgotten, used-once, or broken. The garage is no less messy, no less teeming with "stuff," gadgets, trains, lovely things that Uncle bought for himself. The attic is ever no better, no worse. Model trains, run along the attic floor, games of childhood strewn across.

Even in the television set, with the stereo system, received no less than harsh treatment from the ravages of laziness. CD-Roms, DVDs (he bought every single hits), some lay disorganized, others organized are with haste put in CD cases and put in bookshelf. What was there in the bookshelf before was obviously displaced to make room. Cables line the back of the television, the stereo, the video. The computer, through which the TV would be the monitor, sits there idly waiting to be used as a DVD player, and yet itself is just as messy. Programs are thrown across the desktop of Windows 98. Start-up folder is littered with programs that just gobble up system resource.

My God, that house was the character of messiness. Its occupants the epitomes.

Now they move away. And I this post write, without an interesting story to tell.

I heard it said Aunt would have preferred a daughter. I say that no matter what, nothing could have been done to save that house.

MSN Local Cityguides