sonora2sonoma

by Tim Konrad

Chapter Fifteen

Staying at my house in Sonora, where I grew up, can be more than a little disorienting. The many memories that come flooding out—not all good—play their part well, their layered nature providing an invitation for deep and extended diving. The emotions evoked by those memories give them power. The feelings that arise when making decisions about what to throw away, what to give away, what to keep? . . . That’s perhaps the hardest of all.

What’s important to one generation does not always transfer to the next. Witness how each generation thinks there’s room for improvement over the current one. It’s true not only of ideas, but also of things, like in what am I going to do with my Dad’s old analog clock radio?

When I was younger, I wanted to hold onto everything because you never know when you might need something down the road. Time didn’t seem much of an issue; there was plenty of it. The road seemed long enough back then to support such notions. The clock ticks louder these days, and, as the road ahead has shortened,  the justifications for holding on to things have lost their former vigor, grown less compelling. There is a subtle sense of freeing that comes with the letting go of a thing, of releasing it to the world.

Possessions have their price and that price is allegiance. People take better care of things they value than those they don’t. Possessions demand attention—for maintenance, protection: Letting go of them may be likened to relieving blocked energy in the body; the sense of freeing, of lightness, that results is how life feels when one is not burdened with too many possessions.

***

This spring, it will have been 29 years since my father’s passing. After all the intervening years of returning to the house I grew up in, I no longer think constantly of my father when I’m there. At the same time he’s never far from my mind.

My father was humble, soft-spoken and droll; he also possessed good comic timing, and could find opportunities for humorous quips in mundane situations. He loved to take advantage of my gullibility and continued to do so even after becoming severely disabled by a cerebral hemorrhage.

A good part of my fascination with the place has to do with my father’ artistry, which he expressed in this place with the stonemasonry that adorns it so elegantly. A housepainter by trade, in addition to his stonework, he was also a skilled wall paperer and carpenter. As I go through the place and pretty up the signs of wear resulting from years of tenants, I can’t help but think of him and wonder if any part of him is still hanging around, and, if so, what he would think of how the place has changed.

He maintained it well over the years, which was in keeping with his dependable and responsible nature. nowhere better expressed than in the devotion he showed to my mother throughout her extended and challenging illness.

When I think of selling the place, part of my resistance is because I almost feel I would be betraying my father for leaving this place he sunk his fortune into as the place to raise his family and enjoy his old age. And while he did these things, and hopefully found satisfaction in how things turned out (although I know it would have been better if his grandkids had not been removed to another state), that’s past tense now, and I need to separate myself from this enmeshment and figure out what I need to do to achieve my goals. In other words, think like a businessman, which is about as foreign to me as Kate Perry.

***

Some say you can move from a place and never look back; I say, can you ever totally leave a place behind where you spent significant time in? Roots can run deep! Connections abound. Everywhere you look is somewhere you’ve been at some time or another.