goodnight moon

Goodnight moon, a staple of my childhood, was among the books in a large box sitting in the bottom of our hall closet in the old house. Along with Runaway Bunny, Charlotte's Web, and the favorite out of print Acorn Magic Readers, which I have no doubt were instrumental in the development of my reading skills, my father's copy of Stuart Little was also destroyed.

Tomorrow is my brother's birthday. He will be 17 and he will spend it in the dorm with his friends and a cake that he ordered himself from Wal-Mart. My mother and father are sleeping on an airbed in the shell of their house waiting for the insurance adjustor to show up on Monday morning so they can discuss the value of what used to be our home. Mom and I spent two hours on the phone tonight, me on the internet, searching for replacement values of furniture purchased thirty years ago, a desk my father has owned since childhood, piano music I learned when I was six.

I'm not even there, and I feel so incredibly depressed I can't even breathe. I don't know how they are even there, seeing the house every day, remembering the former life that we had, sighing and throwing away piles of soggy photos that chronicled our lives, the birth of my brother, graduations, family trips, surly looks from my teenaged face, generational photos with my grandmother and great-grandmother.

The brother is nonchalant about his birthday. He mentions only that there is a stupid girl who has wronged him in some fashion which he refuses to enumerate and tells me to "chill out" because he's handling it.

I want to go home.