There are still a few personal items I've been meaning to collect from the house. Books, mainly, a few lingering nick-nacks, but also, a hammock. A very special and historical rope hammock. A gift given to me some ~40 years ago, by my first girlfriend Holly. Received under the most absolute difficult circumstances, too.I've kept and used this for most of my adult life. Never left outside overnight. It was set up an used in my backyard for 5 years on Loma Vista Ave., in Los Gatos, it was the hammock that my friend Bruce had wrestled to find a balanced position on just in time to have the hook on the feet side snap, recoil and strike him dead center between the legs as it dropped to the ground. My then-girlfriend Toni was on the phone with me at the time, as I sat on the patio, and she heard it happen and asked what that sound was.
I carted that hammock to every place I lived, from there to Zinna Way, Shady View Lane, Wilder Ave, Dan's place on Meridian Ave, to my apt on Los Gatos Blvd, then to our home on Carlton, to El Dorado Hills (2 homes) and back to Saratoga briefly, and then, where it's been since, the house we bought in Los Gatos.
There were spans of times exceeding a year or more that it went untouched while the hammock rack sat and rusted in the rains towards the end, but it never left me. It's been a treasured heirloom.
Part of what it meant to me is tied to the history of receiving it from Holly as a gift. It cost over $100 and back then, that was a lot of money that she didn't have. I'd lusted after it for some time, talking about wanting to buy it, and she went bought it for me as, if I recall, a birthday gift. She even brought it to the house on Loma Vista to surprise me, only to be surprised to find me not at home. I was elsewhere, for the night, and I'd lied to her about my whereabouts and plans for the evening. It's a long and complicated story, but when I left the place I'd stayed the next morning, I found a note on my car from her. It was a difficult time. It was pretty much the end of the relationship. I've never forgotten it, or the fact that even with all that had happened, she did end up giving me the hammock as a gift. And it has always, every time it's been used, been a point of subconsious reflection, regret and remembrance of that time, of her, and what we'd gone.
I told my ex last month, while she was doing a massive cleaning and clearing of stuff in the Los Gatos house, that she could toss the rusted hammock rack that'd been sitting on the side of the house for several years. It was beyond salvaging. In parallel, I went in search of a replacement rack on which to set the hammock up on at my new home. I found one online, got it, and contacted her to arrange to pick up the hammock on my next visit to get the kids… only to be told that as I'd authorized previously, she's thrown it in the dumpster during the massive cleaning effort, and it was gone.
I had to pause. My heart dropped. My breath escaped me for a few moments.
I wrote back, clarifying and including the original message stipulating she could toss the RACK, not the hammock. She apologized and I had to decide to let it go, or lose it over losing it.
I let it go.
Several years back, while attempting to clean the pantry after having moved out, an apron that had belonged to her mom got thrown out in the shuffle. I was blamed for it. It's possible it was at my hands or that it fell into the recycle bins that sat below it. Either way, the circumstances were such that it was lost, and I recognized that the loss of the hammock was likely just as unintentional. I like to think it was. So I handed it gracefully and decided to move on.
Moving on meant doing a quick craigslist search, finding an identical one nearby, buying it, and accepting that the original will be lost and into another's hands. I secretly hoped I'd find it had been pulled out at the dump and I'd find it reselling. I'll be honest, It's upsetting that it's no longer in my possession. It meant a great deal to me. But the meaning wasn't just about the item, it was about the history. The history is my memories, and those I'll always have, regardless of having the actual hammock itself. So I'll move on, I'll use this new one, enjoy the hell of it, and remember the original every time I use the new one.
Onward.