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May. 30th, 2016 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshEnd of a lot of eras
Wow. I...have been really bad at keeping this updated. A lot's happened: I will try to work out how to update the roughly three of you who read this thing, without going TOO tl:dr. So:
On Saturday I drove up to New Hampshire for what I've been explaining to people as my grandmother's wake. Which wasn't a completely accurate description, but as noted earlier* she dies in December; Christian Scientists apparently don't believe in funerals; and my mother and her siblings had decided that since Grandpa had always really liked taking people out to dinner, this would be a good way to remember both of them.
So that was a bittersweet occasion in a lot of ways, but I'm not going to focus on that, other than to say: thus ends the story of my grandparents. Because this also overlaps with/results in the ends of a few other eras.
No, unfortunately the "working in the mailroom" era is not among them.
First-off: my aunt has FINALLY sold the cabin.
For those of you who haven't been there: my great-aunt** and her husband bought a cabin on Lake Ossipee back in about 1959, and it's been in the family since. We visited there every summer when I was a child; I spent my honeymoon (and a few other memorable episodes) there; Peter built his first sandcastles and learned to recognise poison ivy on the beach. So if I had a million dollars, it's the first thing I'd buy. Unfortunately, I don't, and my aunt doesn't either: she loves the place too, but it's not worth her while (in effort or in property taxes) to keep it for the roughly two weeks per year that she's there, and her kids, for various reasons, aren't interested in taking it over. So there's been a For Sale sign on the beach for the last three years, and now it's finally sold.
As long as I was at her place on Saturday, Aunt Sue gave*** me a painting that hung in the cabin for many years. It was done by my other Aunt Susan's second husband, and shows the dock and the beach and my aunt and cousin, and the view across the water. That last somewhat unnecessarily, because the outline of the west shore with the Ossipee Mountains rising behind will still be etched on my visual cortex until I die, though I outlive my grandparents.
Second item: This was, of course, a great opportunity to see family. Including, obviously, my Mom, but also my brother (though I'd seen him last weekend, as well: watch this space.) He and his wife had had a more complicated commute than would otherwise have been the case: he's now moved to Bangor.
Dan moved to Portland fresh out of college for a few months--long enough to get addicted to the insane milkshakes at Silly's-- then moved back later when he actually got a fulltime job at Portland Stage. So technically, he was there even before my Dad was. I now think of Portland as HIS place.
Not any longer, I guess.
Third-off: Conversation over the hors d'oevres
"...Aaaand I think I have a cavity."
"Oh no!!"
"Eh. I'm thirty-seven years old, I was overdue. Though all the coffee probably didn't help."
Finally--and, for a lot of reasons, I feel weird about posting this here, but it's somewhat important.
About...maybe two years ago, when it became clear that neither of my grandpaents was long for this world, Mom took Dan and me for a little walk. She was supplementing BOTH our incomes at that point, I think, but she announced that this would only be temporary. Not because she was going to hang us out to dry if we couldn't make our finances work, but because it was going to become unnecessary.
Because--contrary to what she'd always brought us up to expect--she and her siblings were going to inherit a substantial wad of cash under my Grandfather's will. And she was going to pass a large chunk of this directly on to us.
So I now have a check for [some amount I haven't dared look at yet] sitting in a dull-looking envelope in [undisclosed location]. It's not enough to retire on, obviously; it's not enough to buy the cabin; but it'll buy me out of credit card debt with enough left over to leave me wondering what to do with it all.
So I have a week of exciting financial transactions ahead of me, at least as soon as I get to a bank.
Thus: while the end of the era of having accessible grandparents is sad, and the end of the era of the Ossipee camp is heartbreaking, and the end of Dan living in Portland is just plain disorienting...the end of Me Being Horribly Broke AND In Horrible Debt is at hand.
* Interestingly, I apparently was ringing at Old North the morning after she died, and was there again on Saturday morning, which meant that I rushed home afterwards, threw myself through the shower, and got in the car. (Well, once I manoevred it out from behind my housemate's car.)
The other difference is that this time I managed to NOT fuck up Plain Hunt! Booyeah!
** No, not the Henry-Jamesian one. Her sister. Well, one of them. The relatively normal one.
*** Ironically, what I'd really been hoping to inherit from the cottage was the cast iron skillet. The paintings, as far as I was concerned, might as well have stayed with the new owners if they wanted 'em, just like the stuffed dear head (c. 1940). Oh well.
Wow. I...have been really bad at keeping this updated. A lot's happened: I will try to work out how to update the roughly three of you who read this thing, without going TOO tl:dr. So:
On Saturday I drove up to New Hampshire for what I've been explaining to people as my grandmother's wake. Which wasn't a completely accurate description, but as noted earlier* she dies in December; Christian Scientists apparently don't believe in funerals; and my mother and her siblings had decided that since Grandpa had always really liked taking people out to dinner, this would be a good way to remember both of them.
So that was a bittersweet occasion in a lot of ways, but I'm not going to focus on that, other than to say: thus ends the story of my grandparents. Because this also overlaps with/results in the ends of a few other eras.
No, unfortunately the "working in the mailroom" era is not among them.
First-off: my aunt has FINALLY sold the cabin.
For those of you who haven't been there: my great-aunt** and her husband bought a cabin on Lake Ossipee back in about 1959, and it's been in the family since. We visited there every summer when I was a child; I spent my honeymoon (and a few other memorable episodes) there; Peter built his first sandcastles and learned to recognise poison ivy on the beach. So if I had a million dollars, it's the first thing I'd buy. Unfortunately, I don't, and my aunt doesn't either: she loves the place too, but it's not worth her while (in effort or in property taxes) to keep it for the roughly two weeks per year that she's there, and her kids, for various reasons, aren't interested in taking it over. So there's been a For Sale sign on the beach for the last three years, and now it's finally sold.
As long as I was at her place on Saturday, Aunt Sue gave*** me a painting that hung in the cabin for many years. It was done by my other Aunt Susan's second husband, and shows the dock and the beach and my aunt and cousin, and the view across the water. That last somewhat unnecessarily, because the outline of the west shore with the Ossipee Mountains rising behind will still be etched on my visual cortex until I die, though I outlive my grandparents.
Second item: This was, of course, a great opportunity to see family. Including, obviously, my Mom, but also my brother (though I'd seen him last weekend, as well: watch this space.) He and his wife had had a more complicated commute than would otherwise have been the case: he's now moved to Bangor.
Dan moved to Portland fresh out of college for a few months--long enough to get addicted to the insane milkshakes at Silly's-- then moved back later when he actually got a fulltime job at Portland Stage. So technically, he was there even before my Dad was. I now think of Portland as HIS place.
Not any longer, I guess.
Third-off: Conversation over the hors d'oevres
"...Aaaand I think I have a cavity."
"Oh no!!"
"Eh. I'm thirty-seven years old, I was overdue. Though all the coffee probably didn't help."
Finally--and, for a lot of reasons, I feel weird about posting this here, but it's somewhat important.
About...maybe two years ago, when it became clear that neither of my grandpaents was long for this world, Mom took Dan and me for a little walk. She was supplementing BOTH our incomes at that point, I think, but she announced that this would only be temporary. Not because she was going to hang us out to dry if we couldn't make our finances work, but because it was going to become unnecessary.
Because--contrary to what she'd always brought us up to expect--she and her siblings were going to inherit a substantial wad of cash under my Grandfather's will. And she was going to pass a large chunk of this directly on to us.
So I now have a check for [some amount I haven't dared look at yet] sitting in a dull-looking envelope in [undisclosed location]. It's not enough to retire on, obviously; it's not enough to buy the cabin; but it'll buy me out of credit card debt with enough left over to leave me wondering what to do with it all.
So I have a week of exciting financial transactions ahead of me, at least as soon as I get to a bank.
Thus: while the end of the era of having accessible grandparents is sad, and the end of the era of the Ossipee camp is heartbreaking, and the end of Dan living in Portland is just plain disorienting...the end of Me Being Horribly Broke AND In Horrible Debt is at hand.
* Interestingly, I apparently was ringing at Old North the morning after she died, and was there again on Saturday morning, which meant that I rushed home afterwards, threw myself through the shower, and got in the car. (Well, once I manoevred it out from behind my housemate's car.)
The other difference is that this time I managed to NOT fuck up Plain Hunt! Booyeah!
** No, not the Henry-Jamesian one. Her sister. Well, one of them. The relatively normal one.
*** Ironically, what I'd really been hoping to inherit from the cottage was the cast iron skillet. The paintings, as far as I was concerned, might as well have stayed with the new owners if they wanted 'em, just like the stuffed dear head (c. 1940). Oh well.
