Cleaning Out the Basement

It is an enormous privilege to live in the house my father built with his own hands. I grew up here. I’ve cried at least as many tears here as anywhere. I escaped here at 22. And I came back here 33 or so years later, having married twice, raised two children, opened and closed my own business, bought and sold a house or two.

This was largely a place of chaos my first stint. But is was also where my first memories were formed. This is where I came into being, came to know I was different, and came to see just how different I am.

Growing up in a multigenerational home has some advantages. I know more of my family history, recognize more years of movies, past celebrities, old phrases and early 20th century traditions than many my age. Whether that is a function of my surroundings or my own insatiable curiosity, I can’t say. But I absorbed their stories even as they never wanted to hear mine.

The treasures and memories of several lives lived were stashed here in wooden trunks and ancient suitcases. We even found my makeshift Barbies stashed deep in a crawl space of the basement.

The “cellar” as they used to call it. My father told me it was a cellar and not a basement because there was no external egress. You can only get or leave there through a door off the kitchen.

My Barbies. I’d repurposed my Evel Knievel camper as a home for them. There were only 2, and where I got them I can’t remember. They were knockoffs, ragged, and mine. I’d mopped them a few new outfits during trips to Kmart until I was caught by security and deeply humiliated.

My mother (who’d done her own mopping through the years, thank you) threatened me with holding my hand to a red hot burner on the electric stove if I was ever caught stealing another thing. And I didn’t see my precious Barbies again until cleaning out the basement 3 years ago. I assumed they had been thrown away -even though they never threw anything away- and I held them tight to me, reunited. They’re too raggedy now to be displayed, and I don’t need to see them to know I have them back.

I remember vividly a day before the Great Humiliation when I was quietly playing with my Barbies in the living room and my father walked through. He was livid. He said nothing to me, but I heard him loud and clear as he addressed the situation to my mother. In a rare moment of defending me, she told him to calm down. “Maybe it will make him a better father one day.” Him. They insisted I was a him. But it was in that moment that I had at least a bit of freedom to be myself with the understanding I’d necessarily grow from this into a man who would love women and have kids. They could think whatever they wanted as long as they left me alone. And I did go on to do those things, even though I’ve never “been” a man.

It is funny to me now that my Barbies were probably, to my father, the most scandalous things he’d stashed in that overflowing cellar. And yet. We found a very old wooden trunk that obviously contained his father’s mementos.

WW1 paraphernalia, very old school work of my father’s, a few photographs, and a pamphlet of the fucking KKK Anthem! I’d heard the old man was a notorious racist, but I had not a clue he’d attended the MEETINGS! But my Barbie dolls were a source of shame. Got it.

My partner and I kept the thing — put it back in the box and closed the lid. It’s a real artifact of my ancestor no matter how repulsed I feel by it. I never knew my paternal grandfather. He died about 10 years before I was even born. Seems he was every bit as backward and country as my mother made him out to be, but he existed for better or for worse, and the life I live now is about knowing the truth of things and building from there.

I’m tired of carefully constructed narratives and rewritten histories. There was a time when I resented my mother for not “prettying up” many of the salacious family stories she passed on at her cluttered kitchen table. But I’ve come to value knowing more to less, understanding humans with their flaws and their virtues, and seeing my own history both contextually AND as it felt for little girl me.

MY parents were collectors (HOARDERS! They were hoarders.) of all manner of trinket. I have a large Mediterranean breakfront (fabulous vintage 1968 Thomasville) in my living room filled with the things they collected that I most admired. Eight shelves behind four tall glass doors filled with worthless, priceless treasures. It reminds me of things they valued, and connects me to them in a way I find pleasing.

My favorite items are the ones my mother made by hand. A prolific painter of ceramics in the 1970s, she’d kept the very best examples of her work for herself, and I love seeing them. She was very talented. They both were, actually.

I get to reimagine these rooms as I’ve always known they could be in my mind’s eye. Gone is all the wallpaper and wall to wall carpeting. Gone are 3/4 of the trinkets. And gone is the hostility the permeated this place for decades.

When I returned, I decided if there was one place I had some right to in this world, it is on the ground my family has owned for more than 70 years. In the house my father built for his family, which included me. I can’t say they’d be proud of us, or me, but I think my father would admire my preservation efforts. That’ll have to do.

Back when I used to believe in heaven and hell, I believed that when people die they immediately know all that was a mystery in this life. They take on the mind of God and shed their ego and limited understanding. I can’t say I have any clear beliefs about an “afterlife” at this stage, or any beliefs at all really. But I can say if my folks maintain awareness in some fashion, I hope they finally see that I’m not sick. I’m not a perversion. I’m not a fool, and I am living with a rich authenticity they did indeed deny.

Believing parents “did their best” doesn’t mean it wasn’t also woefully inadequate to the situation. They failed me in a lot of ways. I was here even as they were often “out.” I was mostly raised by a television set, other people, and my own devices.

It isn’t often a person gets to go back to the beginning — geographically and metaphorically, and examine it all from a wiser perspective. I have been given such a gift, and I’m doing my best to honor that. It’s difficult for me some days, but I know it is a great gift.

I always thought this house lacked a fireplace, so I installed one. Sitting in this living room today in front of my (gas, but still) fire, I’m peeling back the layers and examining all that I took on that was never really mine. The flames are meditative and comforting. The warmth enveloping. And the experience itself, cathartic.

My parents, aged 35 and 40 by the time I arrived, were children of the Great Depression. They both came up poor and lacked full formal education. When confronted with a trans child in the late 1960s, they fed me and kept me alive and did what they thought was necessary for my ultimate survival — they tried to toughen me up and show me the error of my ways and the invalidity of my thoughts. I can’t say I’m angry about that. Sad, not angry.

But I am doing the very thing I urge all people to do when they’ve survived a traumatic childhood — be for yourself the parent you needed and never had. Go as far as talking to or writing to the little kid who had no choices — and love them as they had a right to be loved. Accept them fully as they had a right to be accepted, and don’t hold on to old notions once you see their limitations.

I am enormously grateful to have a home folks like being in. I like being here, too. And I have kept the things I like to look at, and discarded literal tons of the things that don’t please or serve me. All the while, I am doing for my Soul what I’m doing for this house — making sure what I keep here, I want, I enjoy, and I treasure. The rest was never mine to begin with.

Peace, Lovelies

- MM

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