She's leaving home, bye bye

A month shy of the fifth anniversary of closing on our house, our baby girl moved out to her own apartment. We moved her bed and several smaller items - kitchenware, clothes, bathroom stuff, linens - to her half of a double in the heart of Clintonville. Her housemate Zannah were there, the third housemate David will be coming in from Chicago in a week, and their mutual friend Bernard and his dog Duncan were there to help. Did I say that our baby girl is 24 and an adult with a degree and a job? Just checking.

The indestructible plywood bed frame, bought in Atlanta before Zelda was born, still comes apart with a tap of the hammer and fits back together by hand. The original futon is long gone, and the mattress we bought in Grandview is about ready to be replaced. Zelda was born on this bed, as in delivered unto my very hands. Gven and Zelda made the bed with new sheets while I enjoyed a cool Oberon Ale. Can't you just hear the melancholy oozing from the cello?

Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free.

She (We gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye

Once the bed was assembled and her dresser was stationed beside it, Zelda and I drove a few blocks to her co-worker Ricky's house, just as his party was getting started, to pick up a set of shelves he was giving away, and while Tom Waits wailed we met another co-worker on her way in, and she gave Zelda a ripe plum, which seemed poignant. We stopped in an alley on the way back to examine by headlight and streetlight a couch another friend had left for her to pick up if she wanted it. There were holes in the fabric of the cushions and leaves stuck to the underside, but it seemed structurally sound, and the fold-out bed might come in handy for visiting friends, so we hoisted it into the truck and squeezed it through the back door and into the dining room.

Why the dining room? There are some feng-shui issues that remain to be resolved, such as whether the DR would make a better living room than the LR, since the LR has a coat closet, front door, stairway, fireplace (decorative), a nice mantle, and no wall space to speak of, whereas the DR has almost as much area and might make a better place for a couch, a couple chairs, a loveseat and a TV, despite being adjacent to the kitchen. Or because of being adjacent to the kitchen.

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband Daddy our baby's gone
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly
How could she do this to me.

She (We never thought of ourselves)
is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye

One Oberon's worth of interior design discourse was enough for me, and we went home, leaving Zelda and Zannah to their own negotiations. We stopped for gas but said nothing. I ate a chicken burrito or three and read a couple of week's worth of the Sunday Business and Style sections, and took two preemptive ibuprofen.

I slept fitfully, got up, made coffee, and went for a longish bike ride with a couple of people from the Old North Church. Now all I can see is the unfinished work on this neglected house: the cleaning, the maintenance, the repairs and replacements; the floors, the bathrooms, the paint, the gutters, and the forgotten garden. Instead of doing something about it, I ate fried egg sandwiches and baked in the sun, picking my way through a few paragraphs before taking a break to escape the downward spiral in my head.

Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade.

She (What did we do that was wrong)
is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
fun (Fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years. Bye, bye
She's leaving home. Bye, bye

Gven came home with groceries. The floor and the patio were swept. It's amazing how therapeutic that can be. Do the compost and recycling, water the potted plants and hope the ones in the ground can find their own water. This drought will stress everything, but they'll live. Or not.

We ate bow-tie pasta with marinara and an Australian pinot noir and half a watermelon, and it was all good. It is all good. Gven's friend Kate dropped off her dog Sadie for us to house-sit while they're in Wisconsin to take their son to his second college in two years. Our dog Dali is delighted to have the company. I'm still working the maudlin black humors out of my system, waiting for the liberation to hit me that's supposed to accompany loss.