One last "short timer" stretch before we move from one foreign country to another country we've never been.
Here in London, this was our last weekend before they come and pack out all our belongings, and it rained. I was glad it was raining, because then I had an excuse to not go anywhere, to visit the Sargents again or go to Brick Lane, something I've been meaning to do for three years. It's just as well we didn't visit Bath to drag wet dogs in and out of an Airbnb apartment. I can always come back as a visitor--a tourist, sob!--to do those things. But the one thing I won't be able to do is open the door to a delivery of sour dough bread (yes, I cancelled the subscription) and lay around my own house with the marble table I bought on marketplace and the paintings I did of the Ambassador's garden, and the stars in the windows around the linen curtains, looking out at rain on the lemon tree and the jasmine and the hydrangea and the duvet I hung on the line three days ago that keeps getting rained on and then before I catch it during its dry moment, rained on again. I won't be heading to Sainsbury for bread, and ground beef to make dog food, and cream.
This was the house where I was when my mom died, where I could walk to Green and Stone for art supplies, and Peter watching all his news guys at the kitchen island. Work meetings on zoom at the kitchen table, the bus ride on the 344 to work to the office overlooking the river and Big Ben; Helen's "emotional support bus," the 49, that takes us to Kensington, the squeak of the gate opened by a delivery person bringing me a package from Vinted or Amazon.co.uk. Enjoying so many good shows with Peter--Designated Survivor, House of Cards, the Americans. The little bird doorstop propping open the door where my sheepskin coat I bought at the charity shop hangs. Scout yanking on the leash like he's starting on a fox hunt as we leave the house, letting Bea lead the way and she takes me to the Winter Garden in Battersea park, avoiding Kersley Mews for some reason of her own.
This is house where our hilarious friends Mary and Jerry visited--Jerry playing his accordion in the park's bandstand--and then Mary went home and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And then a year later they came back for a month and took care of the dogs for us and then went home and then three months later Mary died.
The sofas we had to request because the first set hurt Peter's back; where I flip on the fireplace and flopped down to recuperate from three cancer surgeries. I don't remember being sad to when we left San Francisco after living there for 13 years, but later, after living in Portland for about six months, I missed Fillmore Street and the Golden Gate Bridge and the sound of the Sutter bus on our street like a dear family member. I ached to walk to California street to buy groceries, and hear the foggy air blowing and rattling our windows, and the daffodils coming up the same day you put your your Christmas tree out on the curb. I missed the sparkle on the water and in the air of that city. I left my heart in San Francisco, and my uterus and my last good times with my friend Mary here in London.
This is the house Kathy and Lee came and visited; on day two Lee bought Kathy a diamond ring, and on day seven she lost it at the Victoria and Albert museum. And on day eight they called to tell her they had FOUND HER RING. What a town of miracles.
In London, in this narrow, very vertical little "terraced house"--had to learn that term--Nina did her Japanese morning exercises, and Helen came home from seeing Dave Matthews at the Royal Albert Hall and then somehow fell into tickets to see Ian McLennan in a play; it's the house where the kids came for Christmas and we spent that New Years at the Latchmere where at a quarter to twelve they closed the bar for 15 minutes so the bartenders, including the one in a kilt, could drink. Where Atya was sick and then well. Right around the corner from the Albert Bridge where walking home one night we saw a fox. So many pick ups and drop offs in taxis, including the last one coming soon to take us to the train, to the ship, to New York to California for a couple months and then onto the next place I probably won't want to leave. But not as desperately as not wanting to leave the home of Mary Poppins, and James Bond, Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, and now me.
Right. So then. Guess we'll be off.