Kate Greenaway: Baby Mine (1910)
Edmund Evans, Wood Engraver

"I haven't quite yet gotten over it."

Being Exiled eventually reframed my notions of possession. Before, I held a narrow idea of what belonged to me. Besides books, I never cared much for possessions. After Exile, I held onto my collection of books until just before we relocated to Colorado, when I gave away at least a quarter of my collection to the Takoma Park Library fundraising book sale to avoid moving so many. I took to borrowing books from libraries instead of buying them, and I grew to feel that I came to own any book I'd read and even those I'd just perused. Before Exile, I'd also imprinted on our home as our possession. This relationship was a unique one. I felt more the steward than the lord of that manor. That possession was more obligation than anything else. Exile left me feeling as though I was neglecting that obligation.

My relationship with real estate shifted when we bought that second house in Colorado. I did not assume possession of that place, believing it would become my legacy. I didn't love the place as I had loved the house I was raised in or how I loved the original Villa Vatta Schmaltz. The Colorado house was transitional housing, mine in more or less name only, for I was not planning to weave my existence around the place. I would inhabit and care for it but not become possessed by it as I had with the Villa back home.

Through the first half of our Exile, we both missed that sense of inhabiting a house that genuinely possessed us. We had felt compelled to maintain it. We were caretakers of the rentals in Takoma Park, but we were clearly not their owners, regardless of how responsibly we weeded their yards. During those early years, we felt free of most of our possessions—some portion of our stuff we never unpacked but kept in boxes in offsite storage. We only opened a few of those boxes. Our Christmas stuff, which we had no space to store in the first rented place, was an example of possessions we couldn't bear to part with but still retained. Christmas things were legacy quality possessions. Quite a bit of the rest of that storage unit contained possessions that seemed to own us, not dear to our hearts but ones with which we couldn't quite yet bear to part.

In Colorado, we joined. We attended the Democratic caucuses just as if we were citizens. We met the governor, or the would-be governor, and volunteered to canvas for candidates. We participated in the state party convention, and even though we felt like outsiders, we were in Colorado, where more than half the people came from someplace else. I became on a first-name basis with my coffee purveyor. I found a stylist and confidant who somehow just knew how to properly cut my hair. Unlike her DC co-workers, who lived distant commutes from work, The Muse's co-workers in Colorado lived relatively close. They were almost neighbors, and we could even stop by and visit and even babysit when needed. I had realized that we would never return from Exile and in apparent resonance with that notion, I sort of, kind of took possession of what I had where I was.

It's a curious property of life in the twenty-first century that we encourage each other to live in the future. We're all supposed to be up to something, headed somewhere different. Because we aspire, we believe we exist, and to not aspire for something —better, faster, cheaper—seems like a form of death. The present seems indifferent to any future and every past. It demands no progress and might find satisfaction within whatever status quo it happens to find itself embedded. I felt as if the life we found in Colorado belonged to me, with no apologies or deflections required. It was not contingent upon us one-day retaking possession of the Villa back home. It was not dependent upon satisfying conditions that were perhaps permanently out of my discretion. I could be home where I was without regrets or further explanations.

The fortunate Exiles might eventually accept that they were never successfully separated from themselves. Over-identification with possessions, however heartfelt, ultimately amounts to deflection from obligation and into isolation. The cost of Exile ultimately seemed exacted by myself. I came to wonder to whom I was paying tribute and why. Once I began writing earnestly, I started more securely inhabiting my presence. My earlier obsession with returning home faded in relative importance. I found that I could have a self separated from aspiration, a presence satisfied with my present achievement. I retired from continual grieving and got on with living for a change. This was a significant shift. I haven't quite yet gotten over it. I might never.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz