Greetings, friends. (L)

Greetings, friends. Today we had the second and presumptively final day of the private friends-and-acquaintances estate sale. Four people showed up. Another one or two declined to visit when they learned that the items they were interested in were no longer available.

“This house has too much stuff,” Adah spontaneously remarked a couple days ago, summarizing in a single sentence the central fact of our lives for the past month.

So we have finally reached the point of diminishing returns. The estate sale, such as it was, was exhausting, but it put at least some of our mother’s belongings into the hands of people she knew, people who will appreciate those items of hers they selected, and who might remember her fondly when they use or look upon said objects. Many items we gave outright to people who promised to give them to historical sites for public interpretation.

I think we did right by our mother. Even if it was at once both less, and more, than she deserved.

One of the antique dealers that Adah has been working closely with on the estate’s valuables recommended a local estate liquidator. So Adah contacted him this afternoon to schedule a site inspection. I expressed a highly disorganized set of concerns about this dude who is ostensibly coming to cart the remainder of our mother’s crap away.

“You keep calling him ‘The Liquidator’ like he’s evil or something,” Adah told me. “His name is Brian.”

Well, that didn’t help much. Instantly, Monty Python’s pitch-perfect Lloyd Webber parody started turning itself over in my head:

A man called Brian / This man called Brian…

I gave her a wry look and dialed up the song on my phone. To her credit, she got the joke within about three bars. I wouldn’t have picked it up that quickly.

So this man called Brian the Liquidator, presumably wearing a steam-driven robot mecha 30 feet high, will come stomping up Center Hill Road all gears a-clashing on Tuesday morning — or more likely Wednesday, because it is going to snow again — and view the remaining contents of the house with an eye to making us an offer. The offer will presumably be offset by his costs of hauling it away, minus a steep markdown, and the final sum may well be negative.

I kept thinking of exceptions I thought we should make. The clothing history books still untouched. The endless yards of fabric. Shouldn’t they still go to people who will want and use them, and value them for what they are actually worth?

No, we had our chance for that. Neither one of us has the fortitude or indeed the desire to let this drag on forever. At some point, we have to accept that we have done enough.

The point Adah had to make with me repeatedly, because I am anxious and inattentive, is that Brian the Liquidator needs to come and find real value in the remaining items, or else the estate will be deep in the hole to get everything else removed. Once the liquidation appraisal is done, and we accept Brian’s offer, then it basically already belongs to him even before he carts it away. We can’t bait and switch the guy.

I proposed getting an estimate from another liquidator, just for form’s sake. Adah agreed that it would be a reasonable thing to do, but how long did we want the process to take? And she’s right. Even if Brian the Liquidator fleeced us utterly, which he probably will not, we are in a real way trading some amount of value for the freedom to move on with our lives sooner than later. We’re not starting a fucking eBay business. So the marginal difference in return between selling to Brian, and selling to one of the two auction houses in Concord, is likely to be so little that, well, why bother. A liquidator in the hand is worth two in the Yellow Pages.

We did peel off anything related to Jewish faith or culture, to donate to Temple Israel. Some of it are surplus prayer books, haggadot, et cetera. Adah and I have already kept the ones of sentimental value to us, but Jewish law prescribes that liturgical material must be reused or disposed of properly. Much of the remainder are books on Jewish or Israeli culture from the latter half of the 20th Century. Mom was a Zionist. It was a seemingly reasonable thing for a Jewish American to be, once upon a time. So that stuff all goes to the synagogue, rather than the goyim at the local flea markets.

So Adah and I went through each room together, and took up armfuls of the things we have been meaning to get around to stashing, and the items that have already been purchased or promised to specific people. The furniture that is going to AIM has been tagged.

Everything else goes to Brian. A man called Brian.

I had the awful experience of watching my sister take one final spin around the house, taking everything in, and then with a deep breath deciding that everything needful was already put away in the back bedroom we are using for storage, and that the rest could go.

My sister is braver than I am. I still haven’t taken that step yet. I still have to go reckon with the barn.

But now I can at least start thinking about going home, back to Portland. If we agree to Brian’s offer, we schedule a date for the removal, and then presumably his regiment of robotic disposal mecha come steaming up the road, pick up the house, tip it on its side, and shake it like a piggy bank, emptying the contents into the hopper of a waiting hover barge, to be whisked away to wherever such things go when they are whisked. A terrifying thought.

I have to be here to supervise that dreadful day, and then depending on when the professional cleaners come, I get to go home. At the very least, on Tuesday or Wednesday night, I can think about booking my ticket back to the West Coast. I don’t have to be here for the photography in April or the viewings after that. I just have to come back and pack up the items I’m keeping, and load them into the truck before the sale of the house is closed.

Meanwhile, today was supposed to be the Portland Shamrock Run. I mean, today was the day of the Shamrock Run in Portland, and I presume it was indeed run, but not by me. I conducted my own private Shamrock 8K upstairs on the treadmill.

Actually, Hal told me to do 6 miles today, so it was more like a Shamrock 9.6K, which is by far the farthest I have run in one go since I did Bay-to-Breakers in 2011. I did not, sadly, wear green to honor my Mullin ancestors, but only for lack of trying. I’m still proud of them. Éirinn go Brách!

I thought about numbering this post with Arabic numerals, like the NFL did with Super Bowl 50. But no. This tradition is almost two months old. Too late to break with it now. Talk to me when I get to CCCLXXXVII.

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re less sleepy than I am. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. Nighty night!