Moving Your Kids

audrey at her new house
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Well, it's finally come to this: my daughter's house is nicer than mine. Yes. Yes, it is, even if it doesn't have much (any) yard and thus would be unsuitable for dogs, which is what I keep telling myself so I don't kill her and take the house for my own. Of course, her rent is higher than mine too - there is that - but then she's splitting it several ways, so actually it's cheaper. If only I could get young M and the dogs to pay rent. Or if only I was really super rich and I could buy a house of my own! Crazy pipe dreams! Argh! Oh well. Anyway, that eggplant purple (this is Asheville. A's new landlord is a super nice guy who went to Warren Wilson and restored the house using mostly "recycled" - read, he got them at the Habitat store - materials and then he painted each room a different color.) bathroom would send me around the bend quite quickly.

Anyway, though, it was oddly enough kind of fun moving A in yesterday. There's something to be said for the staggered move: she moved out of her house in Woodfin a month ago and put her stuff in storage and crashed at a friend's house for a month, so the whole terrible get everything out of the house oh shit this isn't packed is this going to Goodwill or what just throw it in a trash bag part was over, as was the cleaning of the old house part. Young M and his friend C helped out (okay, I paid them. But still.) and one of A's friends and then one of her new roommates was there with a couple of his friends and I must say, damn. I like her house. I like her roommates. A is doing well.

Also, she has all my towels. Demon child: I'm so gullible that I didn't even make the connection between my towels disappearing and A moving out a year ago. It's always fun to help your kids move because it gives you a chance to get reacquainted with stuff like your old futon, your old duffel bag, that insanely heavy yellow bureau and all the other objects, like towels and paring knives, that used to live at your house. I think I even said something when I moved, like, "I can't understand what happened to all the towels!" and she said back, wide eyed, "Wow, I wonder what young M has been doing with them!"

Way to go, A. Divert suspicion onto your younger brother, who, gods know, is after all totally capable of taking all the towels in the house somewhere obscure and leaving them there in a fit of absentmindedness. Not only that, but his initials are already on A's bedroom door. The house is recycled, so the door is old and came complete with some little kid type graffiti and a few teddy bear stickers and, towards the top, carved with a pocket knife in familiar handwriting, my son's initials and the cryptic legend: You Know Me. You Know Me, you see, rhymes with his initials and is something he has been known to write and/or carve into various and sundry surfaces including, memorably, the coffee table. (He was little then though and already smart enough to add "I love Mommy" to that one, so, well, you know, it's a souvenir.) We suspect this door of having come from one of young M's friends rented houses; in fact, we've pretty much narrowed it down to one on Hanover Street. It was cool to find - and A thinks it's a sign. So do I - a sign that Asheville is really small and we've lived here a long time now.