For my readers

Has anyone here ever had a pro or a pal organize their stuff for them? Could them find anything after that?

My son says the house looks better than it ever has before, although there are still piles of paper, books, clothes and wire containers around -- from my sporadic attempts to make things cohere myself.

I'm stepping out in faith here to say that having a neater house will reduce my level of stress, too. Anybody have that experience?

I want to know there are a few disorganization addicts out there, too, like moi -- taking it one step at a time.

A man of breeding

When I was younger, I read a lot of Louis Auchincloss, that son of old New York wealth and standing who wrote about the repressed longings and moral conundrums of the moneyed class of New York. Well, how could he not, and how could I not?

My ex and I were privileged to be bookends in a memorial service yesterday at which Louis Auchincloss (still very much alive) might have found himself at home. If the WASP writer had been chronicling the Main Line and had penned happy endings, the Quaker meeting house memorial would have offered a lovely finale.

We had come together, some of us from very far away, to celebrate the life of a friend, father, co-worker, grandfather, World War II hero and postwar diplomat. His wife, who had invited me and my ex, sat ramrod straight as her children, now middle-aged told stories about their much loved father. His bravery during the War. How he'd fallen for his lovely co-worker at the Marshall Plan Paris offices. The places they'd seen together.

And the less concrete memories. His kindness. His humility. The love he had for children and grandchildren. The courage with which he faced his death. His wife had asked me and my ex not to be too religious, for her husband was not religious. But the service was filled with the themes of transcendence, mystery, departure, reunion. When it came time for N.'s 13-year old grandaughter to speak, she said, through tears, that her grandfather had never treated her differenlty because she was the youngest of the five.

It was by far one of the loveliest services I have ever attended. And as we left the reception, I pondered how good fortune, character, and a happy marriage helped mold N. into a man so profoundly mourned -- and celebrated. Breeding does not have a lot to do with bloodline, except maybe in horses. N. probably would have chuckled at the notion that pedigree counted for a lot. But he was truly lucky -- and we who knew him were blessed.

Organization -- ain't it fun?

I'm just wondering where, among all the boxes and clothes and family papers and lamps -- where did Mr. C put his blue baseball hat?

Ooops, sorry, we aren't moving...it just feels that way. This organizational treatment is painful. Try only in desperate cases -- when all other therapy fails.

It's not that I don't love my doctors -- and no, it isn't Stockholm Syndrome. I really do hold them in great esteem for being willing to work with me. Besides, they are very kind, and also my good friends.

It's just that right now I can't find anything. And the house is a much bigger mess than it was before -- or maybe it's just that it's inside out and upside down in a way that I'm not used to.

Thank God I never was in analysis. I might never have gotten out.

Marsella 28, Mexico, D.F., 1954

I went looking for my parents this weekend at the 1902 brownstone house in Brooklyn -- and they'd gone. Checked out. How clever of them to leave before the sale. The rooms were bare of all but some cleaning supplies, wrapping paper, a bed upstairs, a sofa in the living room. We're paying my sister's boyfriend to come in and get rid of the little bits and pieces of 45-plus years of family life that remain.

It's easier to leave a house that has been stripped -- easier to put the alarm on and walk down the street, cheerful with children and mothers and fathers on their way to Prospect Park. We walked towards Seventh Avenue, searching for one last drink at the Connecticut Muffin, one last brunch at John's. "They'll let us visit, won't they, Mom?" asked Mr. C. I said that often the people buying homes don't like to know a lot about the families who lived there before -- don't want to be reminded that it was another person's home before it belonged to them.

I don't know what this family will do. It will be interesting to see if they seek us out at all.

But in a kitchen drawer, with my dad's wedding ring, I did find a letter that my sister had left. Noting that it was addressed to my aunt "Marilyn dearest" I didn't read it until we were traveling back to Pennsylvania.Sitting on the train, I struggled to make sense of the small, lovely handwriting of more than 50 years ago. Handwriting is quickly becoming a lost art.

Grandma, what were you doing?

"Hotel Meurice" Marsella 28, read the thin paper. I tried to find the Hotel Meurice online -- probably long gone. My grandparents used to travel south during the winter, even when my mom and aunt were at home. And south didn't mean Florida. Apparently, it meant South America and Mexico.

Best I can figure out, this letter was from Mexico City. Grandma and grandpa were staying, it seems for a while, at a hotel. They'd been to San Cristobal, near the Guatemalan border, then gone on to Oaxaca. This hotel was apparently run by the "Mrs. J." Mrs. J was icy, but thawed a bit when they arrived -- not when they left, writes my beloved grandmama mischeviously.

It seems that Grandma had been doing something subversive --- hauling an English grammar book like a magician out of nowhere, she offered to tutor the Indian women who worked at the hotel. Nothing secretive -- only Grandma Sarah didn't tell "Mrs. J" what she was doing. 'Daddy said I should have asked her -- I knew darn well she would say NO -- SO -- I didn't!'

But another guest told Mrs. J, and the lessons were halted. Too bad they didn't understand English better, wrote Sarah near the end of this two-page letter. I would have really "done her dirty" and told them how they were being exploited. Though grandma was worried that Mrs. J would take it out on the women, they told her that they would be alright. As far as I can tell, she left her English grammar book with the women.

I couldn't find my parents. But I treasure the letter from the woman who influenced me more than almost anyone else. Thank goodness people wrote letters -- thank God their descendants kept letters. This one echoes with the reformer's zeal, a bit of the missionary, and a leavening sense of fun so intrinsic to grandma. She never stopped educating, with a gleam in her eye, passion in her voice, and the mischief of the youngest child she was.

Voices carry.

Last night

Last night I dreamed I was at Manderley again...as I get ready for this weekends trip to New York with the children, that's the line that keeps going through my head.

But the house in Brooklyn about to be sold isn't haunted -- or if it was, no one spoke of it. No dead wife, no vengeful housekeeper. After the end of September, it will become a place that my sister and I might not easily recognize. The early 20th brownstone will be redone by a family with more than enough income to redo the early 20th century pipes and electricity, take down the divide between kitchen and dining room, pull out the pocket doors -- and make it a home in which their family can celebrate all kinds of happy occasions, argue, do homework, and accomplish all the work of constructing a life.

So I don't know why I'm thinking Manderley -- except that this is the last physical place link with my parents and my beloved brother, gone 20 years this winter.

Exeunt omnes. Let the play begin again. The sweet spectres go with the executors -- for free.

I have to say (no you don't, Elizabeth). OK, I'm gonna say that the fight over numbers at the rally in D.C. last weekend really annoyed me. Imagine conservation firebrand Michelle Malkin and blogger Pink Elephant whatsher-name pinning the hugely blown up 1.5 mil on ABC, for heaven's sake. Have they no shame?

Soon afterwards, a writer for the liberal lobby group Media Media used the "l" word to refer to Malkin and company -- a word currently known as Congressman's Joe Wilson articulate response to President Obama's health care speech. Grow up and stop acting like morons. Some of us care about the decisions currently being made on health care and financial regulation and whether more young women and men go to Afghanistan.

In the battle over numbers, the point of the march, whatever it was, is gone -- it seems as if, in the conservative/ liberal blogosphere, the silly season is all seasons.

Crone in training

So when did I become the wise older woman?

I seem to find myself giving advice to lots of people. And fending off some who seem to want to befriend me and get help with their love lives, employment, future books.

I'm getting a little rude, I fear. I tell some people, who want to get the benefit of my foolishness, that I've got not enough time and friends who already don't see a lot of me.

I am blessed with faithful friends -- who give me advice, sought and unsought. Maybe I should send a few of these questing folks to talk to them.

I'm not a crone yet. But when, God willing, I get there, I'll have had much practice.