housekeeping

[constance]

My mother has given me the best of all possible housewarming gifts: she's cleaning my new house for me, from top to bottom. The house has been empty for a while and has just been repaired, and there are cobwebs and dust and scraps, plaster and nails and dirty footprints everywhere. God, I was dreading having to clean it all up myself--and I am not the world's greatest housekeeper, not even, like, in the top million or so--and when my mother told me she'd do it, I practically burst into tears of gratitude.

I went over today to bring her some lunch and tell her to turn on her cell phone, and it already looks a thousand times better, and the termite guys were finishing up their treatment, and as we were sitting on the porch steps with our salads on our knees, the Head Termite Guy came up and asked, Are you the homeowner, and it took me a second. Hey, he's talking to me! I thought, and felt such a dizzying rush of surprise and delight that it took me a second before I could answer.

I still have not quite got over the feeling that my house is something like a house of cards, ready to come down if I so much as breathe wrong, or assume too much. I don't know how long it'll take before I can get past it and start enjoying that feeling of smug entitlement that I'm told comes with equity. But in the meantime, those termite guys can just keep calling me Homeowner. It makes me ridiculously happy.

:::

And after lunch, I drove back to my office and my boss's terrible mood, which had everybody tiptoeing around her all day. I spent the day avoiding talking to her by working with my headphones on, listening to OotP, which still tears me up more than even HBP, I still have not quite gotten used to Sirius being gone, I still expect some deus ex machina to deposit him back into Harry's life and they will live happily ever after in their tug-of-war, role-confused, competitive, entirely riveting relationship, stepping on each other's toes, misunderstanding each other, counting too much on each other, expecting too much from each other.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love, love, love Sirius in this book? God, I do love him so. I loved him in a different way when he was Harry's shining hope for a normal life, in PoA and GoF, but I love him exponentially more as a flawed, angry, sulky semi-adolescent who never really learned to deal with adult life and responsibilities, who spent years locked away in a terrifying Never-Never-Land, trying hard not to lose himself while everyone else grew up and away. Whatever it was he expected from life after Azkaban, he didn't get it, did he? Not any of it. It breaks my heart in a million pieces on the floor, every time I think about it, which is kind of embarrassingly often.

A long time ago and in another journal, I wrote about The Civilizing of Harry Potter. I wonder what would have happened if Sirius had lived on as Harry grew up. I can't think that it would have come to any good, at least not before a whole lot of bad. I believe that there was a world of hurt lying in front of the two of them. But I can't help wanting Sirius back anyway; I miss him, obviously, but Harry misses him more (of course he sucks it up and moves on--when has he ever been encouraged to grieve over anything in a way that he can understand and process?), and honestly, it's Harry I want him back for, as painful and messy and unhealthy (and maybe happy, damn it) as things were always bound to get between two such emotionally stunted people.

Comments

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

Hello! How nice of your mother! Say hello for me, would you? Also I am so happy for you!

I love Sirius in OotP. I want him back--I can't believe that practically the second we got this rich, complex backstory for him HE WAS TAKEN AWAY WAHHHH!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I will say hello! She asked after you the other day, and sadly I was not able to give her much news.

It is hardly fair, especially that JKR took such pains to rough the friendship between Harry and Sirius up and then TOOK HIM AWAY before anyone could even make an attempt at resolving it.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

As long as those termite guys phrase it respectfully, and aren't all, "Hey there, li'l homeowner! How are YOU doin'?" ;)

Your mom is the best. My mom did that for me when we moved into this place, and wow, a set of dishtowels or a nice bottle of wine just doesn't compare to someone who'll get their hands all newsprinty polishing windows, each of which has 8 separate panes of glass! That plaster dust is something, isn't it? You'll be finding it for months.

I worry, though; will there still be things to sand and scrub when I disembark from the Greyhound bus, bleary and thirsty but energetically clutching my work gloves and a flat of primroses?

Your thoughts about Sirius sound a lot like my friend's lament. I finally nagged her into reading OotP (she'd stopped reading HP in a fit of pique because JKR was "...taking too damned long." (poor dear doesn't understand fandom, so she has nothing to keep her rapt between books) mostly because I wanted to hear what she had to say about the Sirius situation, and I was supremely satisfied, if that's not too horrid of me to say, with her level of grief over the supreme unfairness of it all.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

And damn. If I could edit this comment, I'd knock one of those "supremes" out.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Hey, no one has leered at me in so long that I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't welcome being called lil' homowner!

And there'll be plenty of things to sand and scrub, trust me--no matter when you show up on my doorstep. However, I think I will instead just whisk you away to eat Indian food, and we can make HP gingerbread men and pinwheel people instead.

Your friend, is she the one who bailed on you during the release party?? Because if she is, you're much more forgiving than I'd have been.

[leestone.livejournal.com]

Hi there love. ♥ Your mom is a dear for cleaning your house up! :O Man, that is maternal love at its finest.

I haven't spoken to my mother since Christmas. More specifically, we have refused to speak to each other since Christmas.

You know, I am inclined to think that Sirius might have done all right in the world outside, had he lived. It would have taken many years, and it's likely that he never would have recovered himself fully--too many deaths, too much betrayal, too many years in a cage. But his relationship to Harry (stunted and emotionally overbalanced as it was) suggested that his soul was essentially intact, that he was still capable of love on some level, and that he was in touch with his rage and sadness rather than deadened to it. I think that's what would have made the difference, in the end: like Harry, he was still able to feel.

So it seems to me that eventually he might have grown, given some genuine freedom, and lots of love and comfort and beauty and all the things he was denied in Azkaban. I like to think he might have. Anyway. ♥

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think that Harry and Sirius would be permanently incapable of connecting, and I certainly don't doubt Sirius's ability to feel, and never did. I suppose it's just this: that they were each other's hope for happiness, without really any idea of how huge their expectations were for each other, and discovering just how far they could disappoint each other would be an incredibly painful--and fascinating--process.

Harry and Sirius both had a lot of growing up to do. I guess my real point was that I wish I'd gotten to see them grow up together. :/ And now I never will; at least not in canon.

:::

I'm sorry about your mother, sweetie. Your mom and my dad, why must they be so difficult, why. I think they have some growing up to do as well, it seems. :(

[leestone.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha that is the last thing I said to my mother. "Why don't you grow up."
:/

I love you.