Saturday, November 19, 2011

Four Months....

One would think we would be well settled in by now, but I think the time it takes to be confident that you are at home with all your belongings is a relevant thing, completely proportionate to age.

You know where the knives and forks are kept, where the bed linens live and the very essential bathroom items are pretty well right to hand, and under control,  but occasionally you wonder about certain things and you vaguely remember having seen them, but was it here, in the house on the hill, or does your vision stretch right back to what shelf or cupboard housed them on the farm????

I have lost my knitting needle case, - the long. silver cylinder that my mother kept her knitting needles in and which I have used ever since she died.  I am relying on bits and pieces of needles that I pick up at the Bargain Centre to tide me over, but it MUST be somewhere, - perhaps in the weaving trailer which still picks up the sunshine and the wide stretch of valley up on the hill;  full of looms and yarn and forty years accumulation of weaving paraphernalia.  I must go and see, - maybe tomorrow....

I have reached the point where I feel the need to open each cupboard and drawer, empty them out, contemplate them, catalogue their contents in my mind and put them all back, duly noted.  They were so quickly filled up, those busy moving days, as the boxes came in and were emptied, put into drawers and on shelves.

Charles has spent a couple of these snowy mornings going through things that he swept into boxes at the last possible moment. and having a lovely time reminiscing and putting things safely away.  Will he remember where he put them?  Ah, there's the rub.....

The Christmas linens, - where are they now??  I have been following a backward path to when I last saw them, just before the big unsettling day arrived.  Still with some fragile things to pack and no packing paper available I can remember taking them off the shelf in the linen closet and wrapping things safely, - but what things?? Oh, that escapes me, but what I do know is that the tablecloths and napkins are not in the linen closet here, or in any other drawers or chests or basket or box.  So I continue my backward journey and perhaps in the middle of the night I will waken with an ancient Greek eureka moment, and the Christmas table will be set with the old familiar linens.

If not, I still have a couple of damask cloths, but such a devil to iron, - sigh.......

John Singleton Copley



4 comments:

Penny said...

So annoying when that happens, I still havent plucked up enough courage to go through my mothers stuff which is packed away in the shed, must be nearly 6 years since we packed her last house for the nursing home and I have no where to put anything and I doubt the children want any of it either. Felt I couldnt do it while she was still alive, now its over 12 months since her death. oh dear and I am slowing up as well.

Barb said...

Has it been four months already, Hildred? Wouldn't you have used those needles last year when you were knitting the wools socks? Hope those Christmas linens turn up. Sometimes, I wake up in the city and think I'm in the mountains and visa versa.

Susannah said...

Oh I do remember those feelings from moving. I had to go and buy new of certain things because I was certain they were lost. Then unexpectedly six months later I came across them!

Even now I picture something I had but don't know where on earth it is, and that is after seven years.:-)

Beautiful written! . . . and I do hope you find your Christmas linens. x

The Weaver of Grass said...

This sounds so like my last move Hildred - everything turns up eventually but often in the most unlikely places. Put it down to age and keep smiling.

SNOW ALREADY???