At the end of my first summer home from college, my sister and I joined two friends from high school for a short camping trip in Yosemite Valley. Vernal Falls is a moderate day hike from the valley floor, and we set out that first morning, ready for the cool air of the Mist Trail. It was otherwise August-hot, and crowded. I kept falling behind. My sister and friends were long-distance runners in those years, meaning I was the only non-athlete among us. I had to sit, and drink, and rest awhile as a blur of visitors—young, old, uber-fit, and ordinary—swept briskly past.
We did get to the top of the Mist Trail, through the more arduous stretch where you have to climb the stone steps. We swam in frigid water that sent my lungs into spasms; we thawed on granite boulders. Throughout, I was baffled at how my fatigue persisted and resolved to get in better shape. Soon after the trip, my symptoms worsened and proved to be a case of mononucleosis. I forgave my 19-year-old self for having nearly passed out on a log while the world zoomed by, and spent much of the remaining academic year battling a series of respiratory bugs and cleaning up my study habits and sleep schedule.
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There’s a pen-and-ink drawing of Vernal Falls in my mother’s apartment. The artist is another former schoolmate, an accomplished graphic designer. I’ve moved this piece between residences, including my own, several times. For the past decade, it has quietly cohabitated with artwork my mother inherited late in life. Downsizing and moving this collection and the rest of her belongings—first from the suburban house my siblings and I grew up in, and now from a large retirement apartment—has been an ongoing lesson in more ways than I can name. It’s probably unfair to label the lot as strictly “her” belongings, since much of it belonged to my father as well, and some of it to my grandparents.
Given the state of the stuff, and my psycho-historic-poetic leanings, the current move’s challenges of sorting and “dispersal,” as the professionals call it, have consumed at least as much emotional energy as time and expense. It’s impossible to know if a yellowed folder will hold department store receipts from the 1970s, or the only known photograph of a long-departed family member. Brittle envelopes let slip the deeply creased black-and-white snaps, their scalloped borders missing a corner or two.
I am maybe halfway through the non-furniture items when I find the drawing of the Falls, and once again must decide its fate.
Despite an unflattering frame, it is a fine piece and good likeness, probably made with Rapidograph pens, another bit of nostalgia. A spray of pine needles in the foreground always catches my eye. As artwork goes, it’s fairly small, but neither my current home nor my mother’s has much wallspace now. And we’re supposed to evolve beyond stuff-gathering, anyway, learning to let go of things, and of our attachments to them. I hold “Vernal Falls” by its beveled edges as I sit between stacks of files, books, housewares, and memorabilia. I am some two hundred miles from Yosemite, and over thirty years past the era that birthed this drawing and those friendships. The figurative connections are more tenuous. As a poet, I am used to eliding or implying such connections, but am finding this moment messy, like a pastiche of Groundhog Day and Fen Shui.
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Every aspect of this transition is heightened by the global pandemic. We move my mother first, as quickly as possible, into an assisted-living studio with a lower exposure risk, and the higher level of care she needs due to a recent injury. I try to hurry through the rest of the move, under quarantine’s drawn-out protocols and tenor of dread. I let go of more, and let go of it more quickly, postponing the most tangled decisions in the interest of deadlines (read: storage unit). I’m dwelling less, for now, in emotions surrounding my mother’s changing cognitive skills, which throw stark light on the role of memory in attachment.
Her resilience astounds me. She wants little more than essentials, even as she might pivot to an item of personal importance. Have you seen the letter your father sent me when he was away in the army? It’s tissue-thin, typed on airmail sheets, signed with a loving flourish. She loves reading it. I made a point of keeping it on the display shelf of her buffet cabinet so that we wouldn’t misplace it. I just gave the cabinet away; the letter, safely packed, awaits a new station. My mother, in her new, smaller-yet-safer quarters, has all but forgotten this apartment I rush to clear out amid flurries of doctor calls, paperwork, administrative conflicts, and parenting my teen via text.
I empty another closet, another bookshelf. I seek homes among family, friends, and charities for as many things as I can, hoping to avoid squabbles, delays, landfill, and contagion. I tire of making decisions. The movers can pack up “Vernal Falls” with the larger items headed to storage. I am grateful for these expert movers, for their attentive blend of compassion and dispassion. I am grateful for my family’s patience as boxes and bags arrive for sorting in our tiny home, and for the privilege of being able to do this when so many are suffering beyond measure. I sift through trinkets, dishes, clothing, photographs, and proliferating piles of paper, savoring parts of my parents’ and grandparents’ lives, and of my own.
I think of the Falls, their kinetic example of transfer and progress, not to mention grace. I am trained, after all, in the fitting of images. But I am also the barefoot cobbler, improvising. A girl gasps for air in a cold mountain stream. A woman wades through papers toward a steep, far shore. On every level, there’s more to climb and swim through, and more to unpack.