A Vacuum Cleaner Bag Full of Memories

Yesterday I bought a pack of vacuum cleaner bags for my 'mini mite'. They were wrong, and I didn't feel like going out again to return them to the store, so I decided to empty out the one bag I have, and reuse it. It turned out to be a kind of time capsule, bringing back memories of my earliest days here in this little apartment.

I found long strands of reddish hair that were vacuumed up six months ago when I first moved in here. That shade was chosen by x because he wanted, as he put it "something different" He thought it would be cool if I looked like Raymond's wife, from the sitcom 'everybody loves Raymond'. He'd thought I resembled her when I became upset (which was often in that house with him). So I dyed my naturally brunette hair for him. The results were fine, but after I escaped him, I wanted my own colour back. I found a shade of dye that closely matched my own, and redyed it. Now here were the old hairs, reminding me of that 'other' me. The Marian who would consent to changing her looks on the whim of someone else, because he wanted me to look like someone else.

I found a lot of cat hair from my little Catherine who was my roomie for the first two months of living here. She died of extreme old age just before Christmas. Those weeks together with her were nice and peaceful. She never betrayed her presence (cat's are not allowed in this building). I carried her in on moving day, concealed in a box. Early mornings when I left her alone, to work as janitor at Boston Pizza, she slept quietly in the bathroom. When I returned at noon, and opened the bathroom door, she would stagger out a few yards, then her weak hips would give out and she would sink to the floor. I would carry her the rest of the way to her food dish in the kitchenette. After her lunch, she staggered over to the couch I was making from papier mache, and climbed into one of the built in shelves I had created with moving boxes, for a snooze.

The day she died, I had a day off from work. I held her in my arms for hours as she drifted further from my world, and into the next. Then I made a bed for her on the bathroom floor, and layed her there. I sat on the floor and stroked her, reminding her of her father; Sam, who was waiting for her in heaven. I don't believe she felt pain, she simply slept more and more deeply until finally, at 4 am, she passed away.

The following day was a nightmare orchestrated by x. Catherine was nearly buried in a grave I dug with a spoon, in the lovely garden behind a house that has been turned into a business. At the last moment, her body was taken away by x, to be buried at the house where I used to live. I didn't see her buried, but I'm told she has a nice place under the arbutus tree where my pet rabbits are laid to rest.

The vacuum cleaner bag revealed a large amount of white powder that poured out and dusted up to coat my face and hands. I wondered at it, and then remembered what it was - baking soda. I'd been combing Catherine one day, and accidentally opened a scab on her back. She bled a little, and the warmth of her body sleeping on the stain, set it into the white carpet. I tried to clean it with dish soap, scrubbing with my fingertips because I didn't have a cleaning brush. I noticed the stain getting larger, and only then realised, I'd rubbed my fingertips raw. The soap had eaten through the skin, and the friction from the carpet opened the wounds until my blood mixed with the original stain. I poured hot water over it, which only resulted in a bigger stain, as the water turned pink from blood and seeped out into a large pool. Now I had a stain larger than my head. I soaked up most of the liquid, and left it to dry. During the night, Catherine, in typical cat fashion, chose exactly that spot to sleep. The red dampness coated her fur, staining her pink. When she went to sleep on the opposite side of the room, she took some of the stain with her, lay down, and transferred a new red mark on the carpet there. She did this several times.

I asked questions at forums, and at stores, on how to remove a blood stain. I was told vinegar, I was told vodka, I was told ice cubes... nothing worked. Then a kind woman from a forum where I visit, told me about baking soda. I used up all I had, pouring it over the stains (I had about six). I left the powder on overnight, placed my laundry basket over one, my dishtowel over another, anything I could find over the rest, so that Catherine wouldn't lay on the baking powder and make herself sick. In the morning I vacuumed it all up, and viola! The red was nearly gone! I repeated the process half a dozen times, cleaning up the edges of stain that hadn't been covered well enough, crawling around my tiny apartment looking for, and finding, more stains that were quickly sprinkled and covered with stuff. In the end I had my nice white carpet again, Catherine enjoyed another combing, and my vacuum cleaner bag was stuffed with baking soda.

Those early days in this apartment feel very innocent to me. I was basking in the glory of freedom after a lifetime of denying myself in favour of others who did not have my best interests in mind when they made their demands. I was fighting to wrench out the hooks that x had embedded in my skin, I was trying to make my new life work, and struggling against the undertow as x used all his strength to pull me back under his thumb.

Now here I am, six months later. My apartment feels like home (actually it felt that way immediately). I've learned to budget myself so all my bills get paid on time. I've established a credit rating and gotten my first credit card. I've learned to use it wisely so I don't become overwhelmed. I still have my job, and my boss likes me. I'm studing to get my grade 12 so I can move on to a better, more fulfilling job (where I can wear nice clothes, haha). I've restructured my dealings where the house is concerned (I own half of the house where x lives), so that I will be less likely to get ripped off when it is eventually sold. I still have the odd struggle with x. He likes to park, for example, right in front of my window when he spends the night with his new "girlfriend" who lives in the building next door. In case I don't notice the car, he emails me when he returns home, to "apologise for parking there". There are other baffling and immature (actually retarded) things he does, but I couldn't care less. He has no hold over me anymore.

On a different subject - I've discovered the joys of Shakespear. My great friend is sending me CD's in the mail, of Shakespear's plays. They're done by bbc, and are excellent. The acting is fantastic. It must be very difficult to act in a play like these, because the language is so old fashioned. I would imagine it must be very hard to avoid sounding as though one is simply reading from the book. These actors pull it off to perfection. I can sit for hours, listening to the play from start to finish. I recommend them for anyone who is interested in this kind of thing. I've bought myself a little VCR, and am looking for Romeo and Juliet on video. None of the local video stores has it in the older version that I want, but I'm told there might be one in the next town of Comox, so I plan to go there soon, to check it out.

Foreign films are another great art form. I recently rented Amalie. What a wonderful movie! The subtitles don't detract from the experience at all. There is something very arty about foreign films, that doesn't often exist in films made here in North America. All the background scenes with old buildings and crumbling walls, the interiors with their old fashioned fixtures, and large windows with wide sills. The actors themselves who are so much more 'real' than American actors usually are. One of my local video stores has a large selection of foreign films. Now that I finally have a video machine that actually works, I plan to spend a lot of time there, picking out movies. Life is very good.