By Edie Everette / Herald Forum
Moving to a new house makes me want to smoke. But nearly everything makes me want to.
I drew a comic where two teenaged decorative yard deer are caught smoking behind a hedgerow by their decorative deer parents. Also, in blue ink, I drew the two Russian sailors that my friend Barbara and I met on Seattle’s waterfront in 1976 along with a drawing of their Russian cigarettes that contained three-inch-long hollow filters with one inch of tobacco at the end.
The demographic that is saddest about me moving are the elderly women in my town. For some reason, after my living here for 14 years, they adore me. One of these women paid me to sew a dress for her 80th birthday party from the blue Ankara fabric she obtained in Africa years ago. I had no pattern, only her favorite dress to look at. Because I sewed gold trim around the wrists, everything became divine.
The stupid thing is that I’ve packed some items for moving too early, like the only pan I own to bake cornbread and brownies in. There is no substitute! I also packed our emergency lamps and little propane stove, so naturally the other night the power went out up here in the Sky Valley and we had no way to make coffee, a fate worse than you know what.
We live in a perfect little house that has a Switzerland-like view of the Index, Perseus and Baring mountains. We are moving from this small town of less than 150 people who never lock their doors, to a house in a city that has a drug dealer across the street. I told this to my youngest niece who after a pause asked, “What kind of drugs?”
A good thing about this move, which I pray will be my last, is that we will be close to more people and amenities. I will not have to drive up U.S. 2 late at night in pouring rain with halogen truck headlights blinding me toward the highway’s white lines that disappear under grime two weeks after being painted.
The other day I was grabbing boxes from the front of a liquor store in the city we are moving to, smaller boxes perfect for packing books. My partner and I were loading them into the car when I found a pint bottle of Smirnoff with a sip of vodka left in it. I lifted the bottle to show my partner just as a man in a big, boat of a car drove up with his window down. His eyes were watery above a red, bulbous nose as he said, “I’ll take it!”
The older I grow, the less I want to carry. Nostalgia is costly, both mentally and because of the space it takes. I was about to order a book on Amazon titled “Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion” by Agnes Arnold-Forster but would not allow myself to since I seem to buy books that I intend to read versus actually reading them. In the book the author explores “…the evolution of nostalgia from its first identification in 17th-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you).”
When I was young and moving from apartment to apartment in Seattle, I would pack every possession that had potential because, after all, I had a huge future ahead in which to do absolutely everything I ever imagined accomplishing. But now I treat these objects the way I’ve read the advice about getting into a relationship: Don’t stay with someone because of their potential.
After we move, we will no longer experience the silhouettes of black bears carrying sacks of garbage through our back yard at night. Nor will we have families of living — versus decorative — deer in the front yard eating the variegated hosta plants to nubs. This here is a bittersweet and exciting move. We are so lucky, and will have a big shop to build all of our stuff in. This here is an adventure to celebrate, not smoke over.
Edie Everette is an artist and writer living — for the moment — in Snohomish County’s Sky Valley.
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