Object-ives #25: Leaving Behind the Gargoyle

It isn’t easy to escape the gravitational pull of our things

Let’s travel full time, we said to each other in 2023. A life with no fixed address and very few possessions. My husband and I found renters for our suburban house, and the next step was to unload its contents.

But there were so many things. I walked through the house attempting some kind of inventory, organizing objects on shelves and in boxes: this to give away, this to sell, this for our grown children. Sometimes I’d unload a great deal of stuff all at once. But some objects, like the gargoyle, persisted.

I had picked up the gargoyle—surprisingly heavy—in a quirky shop in Cambridge, England. About the size of a bulbous gourd, it sat with its arms wrapped around its shins, all pointed ears, observant eyes, and pensive contemplation. I was in my twenties then, working an office job on a nearby military base, writing short stories and essays on evenings and weekends and full of literary ambition. I’d taken the train to Cambridge to look through bookshops and feel connected to erudition and enlightenment; I took home some used books and this intently focused hunk of molded concrete, probably meant as a wry garden ornament. It looked amazing on the highest shelf of my bookcase. I imbued it with hope.

Time passed. We moved and moved again for one job or another. I freelanced a little, taught school. We had our son, then our daughter. There were math notebooks and book reports strewn across the kitchen table, also birthday cakes and tax forms and Thanksgiving turkeys, and the gargoyle silently presided over it all. Once, lifting it from a box after a move, I found one of its feet had broken, which pained me more than I could explain. I glued together the concrete slivers, declaring that the cracks added to its gargoylian charm. It resumed its vigil. We stopped noticing it much. If you ask my children to name objects in their childhood homes, I doubt the gargoyle would make the list, but if you show them a photo they would say, yes, that was always there. Almost invisible.

The kids grew up, went to college. The idea of a new life of world travel evolved from a conversation to a rough plan, to a detailed plan with spreadsheets and due dates. It was time to interrogate each possession, and the gargoyle was suddenly very noticeable. Was it always this heavy? I carried it to a spot in the basement designated for stuff to go next. It settled onto the shelf and peered out, just as it always had. I had the urge to explain. Or apologize.

I found new owners for dishes, blankets, neckties, cake pans, extension cords, Legos, a popcorn air popper, an ironing board, picture frames, watercolor sets, bike racks, baskets, mason jars, shoes. A lawn mower. The kitchen table. But the gargoyle? I kept reaching around it. It appeared to be maintaining its vigil in the basement, and I appeared to be letting it.

I took photos from its front, side, and hunched little back.

Finally, when there was almost nothing left in the house, when my husband and I were sleeping on a mattress on the floor with only a small suitcase and backpack each, I offered up the gargoyle in an online neighborhood group. I included all the photos and described the old shop in Cambridge, the glued-together foot, its long tenure presiding over the kitchen table. It’s heavy, I warned. It must be moved with care.

Half a dozen messages from interested takers popped up with startling speed. I read each message and chose the person who said she loved its furrowed brow. Quickly, I took it from the basement shelf, wrapped it, and set it on the porch.

She texted to say sorry, she couldn’t stop by until the morning. No problem, I responded, and scrubbed the sink, wiped out the hall closet, took out the trash, helped my husband clear some things out of the shed, all the while pulled toward the package on the porch. For the hundredth time I imagined pulling it inside, feeling its weight again. After all, there were a few items I planned to keep at a friend’s house: my mother’s hand-painted cards, a few drawings and lumpy clay pots made by my children when they were small, notes from my husband, and a few old notebooks filled with my earnest handwriting. Enough to acknowledge the best of the life already lived without weighing down the life to come.

I also kept a blank notebook, tucked into my backpack.

In the morning, I opened the front door and the gargoyle had been claimed. In its stead was an empty space. I took up the broom and swept the porch, and then I swept the whole house clean.

Launa Hall and her husband have been traveling full time for over two years. She writes travel pieces about connections, contradictions, and what’s beneath the surface at Launa at Large. She holds a writing MFA and is at work on a book about how children learn to read in different parts of the world. Her favorite place she’s traveled is usually where she is right now.

Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.

Recommended reading on possessions:

“The Joy of Somebody Else’s Old Sweater” by Sara Benincasa, Saratonin

“How love shows up in ordinary objects” by Mallary Tenore Tarpley, Write at the Edge

“Details,details,details” by Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next

“thrift month: not everything secondhand is thrifted” by Dacy Gillespie, uflattering