Dismantling a house, a life...

Our house now bears the look of lives in transition. Pictures are coming down from walls stacked on the floor, furniture being moved into rooms as others get emptied to allow for us to sort our belongings. Everywhere I turn there seems to be another pile of things. I thought a great deal about how all of us spend so much energy and time putting a home together, how important all of this is to the perception that your life is ordered and manageable. But perhaps that was paramount for me to feel settled here since my life in LA has felt much like an exile's in a foreign land, the yearning for the return home the one constant refrain. And like I had said earlier, there is something terribly liberating in shedding all that I had held on to for sentimental reasons. Really, is there any reason why a 40 year old should still be carting around papers written for her AP English class in high school? I am editing my life with a newly discovered ruthlessness, something that will, hopefully, keep our lives in New York from resembling the craziness of "Sanford and Son."

Over the weekend, I took and sold half my cookbook collection. Oh, I did mention my 'thing' for books, right? It also extended to tomes of the culinary variety. And since our house's pantry begged to be filled with a large collection, collect is what I did for the past five years. Now, in all fairness, most of these books were given to me as gifts for birthdays. While at this secondhand bookshop that specializes in cookbooks--it was the epitome of a used bookshop with narrow aisles blanketed on each side by floor to ceiling books--I couldn't pass up two Junior League cookbooks from the South. These books offer a narrative of lives lived in places that sound exceedingly exotic to me. And most of the recipes for their baked goods are always yummy and homey in that old fashioned way we, or rather, I'm always searching. This might have something to do with the fact that my mother didn't own a measuring cup and never baked, so that each and every one of my birthday cakes came from Peter Pan bakery. Of course when my husband saw me entering the house with a wee small bag, he couldn't pass up the opportunity to point out that the purpose of this exercise was to unload not reload. Ha, ha.

I have now baked two or more items each day. I find it incredibly relaxing and reassuring to hear the whir of my stand mixer. I'm scouring old cookbooks for recipes I've never tried. When I'm overwhelmed by the cupboard jam packed with stacks of pictures--let me say I'm not as obsessed with cameras as is the stereotype for "my people"--I just walk into the kitchen and turn the oven on. I don't turn it on to stick my head in to pull a Plath, but rather to bake something that will fill the house with tantalizing aromas. Now, the funny thing about my obsessive baking is that I don't really care for sweets. I'm more of a salt person. But there you have it.

It's a funny thing when each meeting turns into a potential 'good-bye'. I've decided to avoid all 'good-byes' by not ever saying it. It's a good ploy since no one, especially me, is left feeling that sense of loss that this lunch, this coffee, is the last one for a long time.