The Hillhouse

I’m fairly sure the Germans have a word for it. They are good at unapologetically mashing together a bunch of words, thereby making a whole new word which more perfectly describes some phenomenon. At the window just now, looking out down the hill and over the tops of the trees, a feeling washed over me. I lingered in it, trying to feel it as deeply as I could. Trying to understand it as best I could.

I was kneeling on the floor by the Christmas tree, looking out of the picture window in the living room. The sun was bright, and it highlighted the cobwebs and the dirt on the window frame. The grass outside was resting in matted clumps; I haven’t had the money to cut the lawn in years. These days the property reeks of neglect. The decaying wooden window frame and the cracked pane of glass itself, held together only by a sheet of tinted cling film confirm that too. On the sill there rests an antique glass bottle with a garden of moss and tiny ferns inside. Years ago, Elihu and I came upon it on a winter walk in the woods. It is as captivating and mysterious now as it was when we found it. It’s been there for ten years, a tiny universe within a jar, continuing somehow to live. Getting dustier and dustier.

As I sat there, I was caught up in this feeling of acute sadness mixed with a sense of expansiveness. It’s hard to convey. One moment without end. Loneliness and dust and sunshine and silence. But I recognized this feeling; I’ve had it in lots of places. What is it about? It’s not quite sorrow, it’s not entirely unpleasant, but it hurts just a bit to feel. It’s a certain sort of aching. It feels as if I’m missing things – and it feels as if I’m also resigning myself to that missing. 

My house – at least the living room – is a very cozy place, especially so at this time of year, with the tree and candlelight and lovely decorations, and it has an effect on everyone who visits. When they enter the big room, people sometimes sigh or pause for a moment. Some even open their mouths. The living room here is a beautiful country sanctuary at Christmastime. And for the most part it does the job; it helps me to forget how lonely my life is, it helps me to forget that my best days are now most likely in the past, it helps me to forget that one of the major remaining events in my life will be my mother’s death. For a few weeks of the year, it is a very pretty distraction. And while I’m grateful for this space, sometimes it makes the contrast between the now and the never-to-be even harsher. I’m missing something, I just know it. But I just don’t know what that is.

For me, writing helps soothe the aching. It helps me to believe that all this longing-for-what-I-don’t-know isn’t for naught. You know, the old writer’s idea that every experience, no matter how crappy, is worth it simply for the sake of the story. So. Here’s the story – only it has no ending.

Even when I box up all those family treasures in a few weeks, turning the corner into red and white Valentine’s Day decorations, the ache won’t dull. In fact, it will become more acute as I wrap the ornaments and strip the mantle of the pine boughs. There will come again that one afternoon of the heavy heart. There will be the empty room, and that annual moment of reflection. It happened again, and it has gone again. I’ll stand there, hands on my hips, taking in the room now vacant of decorations, with pine needles and ornament hooks scattered across the floor, the only apparent color being the brown of the couch.

I wonder at all my fellow western-world humans who, like me, haul out the decorations each year, install them and then pack them away. They too must have those moments of rumination – coming upon old family trinkets and remembering again the stories that go with them – they too, like me, must feel a sad sort of “what now?” feeling in their stomachs when faced with an empty room afterward. It’s not just me, I know it. Anything I can possibly think or feel is certainly not novel or new.

As my son grew up, he spent all of his Christmases, save one, with his father. Alone in the house on those Christmas mornings, I’d look out the big window at the hills in the distance and wonder at the scenes going on at that very moment. Exhausted parents, shrieking and delighted children, living rooms covered in a sea of spent wrapping paper. I remembered how it was when I was young. And it was all going on right at that moment – somewhere out there. On the one year that I did have Elihu with me, it was so cold and lonely (literally, we were low on heating oil) that he actually cried. On Christmas.

The sun is now on the other side of the house, and it helps tone down the ache. Not sure why. Maybe it feels closer to evening – helped by daylight savings time – and that makes me feel like I’m closer to the nightly respite of sleep. Only that’s not really true. I have mixes to listen to and corresponding notes to make. I have original songs I need to revisit and relearn. I have a few shows to book and folks to call. There’s a slow leak in my tub drain and the basement sump pumps are in constant use, so I have to find a plumber. And I will make myself get to the gym. I’ve been good about that recently, no sense losing my momentum. No students today; I’ve been given the gift of time, and I’m going to use it well.

Day after tomorrow, Elihu and I are taking the train to Manhattan. We’re going to stay for two days with some dear friends for a final time in their Soho residence. They are retiring soon and moving to far-off Utah. This brings to a close a thirty-plus year history of visits. Ages ago, when I was a touring musician and performing in the city, I’d sleep on their floor. We remained friends, and long after the bands were over and after I’d begun the single mom chapter, my son and I continued to visit. After Elihu returned from a trip to Europe a few summers ago, he found his way to their home first, before heading back up north. There will be no more landing pad in NYC now, but that’s a minor loss compared to the fact that I can’t be sure when we’ll see our old friends again. I am going to savor this final visit. By Christmas, just five days hence, Elihu will be in the Midwest with his father, and I’ll be back here, alone in my cottage in the woods.

Before I know it, this eagerly anticipated visit will become just another memory. It’s enough to inspire a wistful sigh. I suffer a tiny heartbreak at the thought. But that’s the way it works here on this mortal plane. Expectancy, experience, memory.

The passage of time – or rather the unceasing forward movement of it – can be a blessing or a curse. If one is in a bleak situation – in jail, in a hospital bed, in a nursing home – passing time is itself a challenge. When I broke my neck as a young adult, I spent two months in a bed, unable to move. The wait was grueling. The boredom was maddening. Time positively dragged. These days, while I’m not entirely thrilled about being here, I do realize I’m in a unique and valuable spot. I am filling the space with songwriting and performing, which is good. At the moment, there’s no end in sight to the material; there’s always something waiting to be created. And if I apply a small bit of discipline, it means that I not only have something to show for my time, but it also passes more quickly – in fact I reside in a timeless place when I’m creating. I like that.

The feeling that inspired this writing has dulled now, and now the urgency of my to-do list has begun to tug at me. The out-of-time thing has once again taken place during this writing session, and now I see that it’s later than I’d realized. Or later than I hadn’t realized.

My takeaway from this on-paper rumination is simply that which all of us know, but seldom consider too deeply. Most of our lives are simply made up of memories. And with every forthcoming moment we have the opportunity to make another one. Memories are the only things during our lifetimes – be they accurate or self-tailored to suit our needs – that remain.

So, it’s time now for me to loosen my chair-stiffened joints and get going. There’s much yet to remember ahead.