Lucky? Me? If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any.

3 THE WEIGHT OF THE EARTH

Mama’s house looks like a pack rat hurricane bomb went off in it, and contrary to what she’s claimed from the day I was born, the mess of this place is not my fault. There’s twenty-one years of hoarding in here that is one hundred percent Effie Fortune, and she’s got her reasons for it all. There’s a cardboard box full of empty milk jugs in the corner of the kitchen where my ghetto blaster used to be. Mama’s saving those jugs for the kids down at the elementary school for seed planting in the spring. The big bag of dryer lint and egg cartons that I have to hoist off the top of the deep freeze every time I go looking for frozen casseroles and ice chips is for Peggy’s handy little fire starters. A godsend when the kindling is damp, Mama insists. And the piles of newspaper in every corner of the cramped living room? Well, there are good stories in them. History.

Then there’s my bedroom. Stuffed animals jammed in the corner of the lumpy old bed, right where I left them. Axl Rose’s, Kurt Cobain’s, and Jim Morrison’s sun-bleached faces still cling to the walls with rusty old tacks. My precious closet is now a time capsule that I can crawl inside whenever I need to wrap myself in a simpler reality. Mama could have turned my room into a den. Or a still. A storage space for the milk jugs, dryer lint, egg cartons, and newspapers. Instead, she left it all exactly as it was. No doubt she’s got her reasons.

I’ve spent the last three days rummaging through the contents of the trailer while Mama’s at work, ignoring the phone when it rings, much to the consternation of the pack of local nosy-holes who’ve taken it upon themselves to check up on me. The giddy lightness I felt when I pawned, sold, and chucked pretty much every piece of my Toronto life has been replaced by a heaviness. As my hands glide across the pages of the dust-caked photo albums I found in a milk crate, or tug on the seams of old pants to see if they hold, or even poke around in the clutter and mess that isn’t mine, I feel more grounded in the gravitas. Surely to God the meaning of my life is buried in here, somewhere. But the weight of it all is a little more suffocating than I expected. Especially today. I have to go to a funeral.

“Ma, you could have cleaned out my room you know.” As I walk into the kitchen where Mama’s dribbling a dose of gin into her afternoon tea, I try to make those words sound like a simple statement. A permission, long overdue. She could have stuffed everything in garbage bags long ago, and I’d have had no right to piss and moan.