All that you can't leave behind

I think it is hard for my mother to let go of her house. I know it's true of so many parents who cannot quite accept that living in their homes is no longer practical, or perhaps even possible. They may have raised families in that house. Sorted out all their dreams and priorities while sitting at the kitchen table. Kept vigil in a dark living room the night their oldest broke curfew by four ungodly hours. Four hours of panic and worry.

They were the grown-ups in that house, and now you're going to tell them they shouldn't live there anymore? Who are you, anyway? What right do you have? Especially after you made them sick with worry by coming home at 3 in the goddam morning.

I'm pretty sure my mother feels this way - unwilling to give up her home. And the fact that she died two years ago doesn't dampen the intensity of those feelings. It only makes the conversations with her a bit more complicated.

My family moved into that house in November, 1979. It was a return to Mom's hometown after nine years and seven relocations up and down the East Coast with the U.S. Navy and then EDS.

I didn't know it then, being only 10, but it was also the first step in my parents' divorce. I don't think my dad knew it then, either. Years later, Mom told me that she knew she wanted a divorce, but she wanted to be closer to home before she went through with it.

My parents were married for three years after we moved into that house. Three years. Mom had a steely patience and persistence that cannot be matched. She planned and she waited, planned and waited. When my grandfather died in the summer of 1982 and left each of his children a couple thousand dollars, my stay-at-home Mom pounced on the opportunity her little "windfall" presented, and she changed her life.

She kept the house. He bought -- don't laugh -- the -plex side of a brand new duplex in a sketchy neighborhood. He complained to me recently that he has never made a dime on any of his real estate purchases. No shit, Donald Trump.

And actually? Go ahead and laugh.

That house was my mother's 4-bedroom, 2-bath declaration of independence.

When we moved back to Florida, she did all the house-hunting.

There had been a hurricane (Fredrick) not long before our move, so Mom wouldn't even consider a house that had new carpet. She figured that was a good sign of flooding.

She made the short list of schools to which she wanted to send her kids, and spent a few weeks riding around town with Realtors and trolling the streets on her own.

That was, as it turned out, how she found our house. There was a sign on the lawn and a couple of teen-age boys playing ping-pong in the open garage. She looked at the house, and assumed it was out of her price range. But she stopped anyway and asked.

When she found out the sellers were asking exactly was she was ready to pay, she called my dad at work and they submitted a contract that night.

When I think about that time - back before their divorce when our homelife was pretty ordinary (or at least had a hard candy shell of ordinariness covering the rich, chocolatey center of depression, alcoholism and dysfunction) - I can't think of our house in anything but Suburban Family terms. I picture it the way it looked when relatives were coming for a visit. I picture Christmas morning and birthday parties and sofa forts in the living room.

I picture it . . . I don't know . . . clean.

And now I wonder how my mother pictured it that first time she saw it.

Was she looking at a home for a seemingly typical nuclear family of four? Or did she go from room to room thinking, "Yes, this would be a fine place to be a single mother"? Did she tour the bedrooms and say, "This will be my room, and this will be Bettie's room and this will be Thor's room and this will be the room where I send my awful husband to sleep until his crazyass half-duplex is completed - four months late and thousands over budget"?

Last night, I imagined touring the house with Mom now. If she has resisted letting it go, maybe I have been too eager.

I imagined standing with her on the street in front of the house.

Remember the jump rope that hung on the electric wire for, God, it must have been 10 years? What happened to it? Did it blow down in a hurricane, or did the rope finally disintegrate and float down on the driveway in a shower of brittle little fibers?

Look, I replaced those groovy globe lanterns on the courtyard wall with something a little classier. A little less dated. I know that one electrician after another told you they couldn't do it, but I convinced the guys I knew to slip a piece of PVC into the wall so the lanterns could be mounted on that like a post. I thought of it all by myself, and it reminded me of a solution you would have had. Maybe I didn't think of it by myself after all.

Do you remember the time I stayed out all night at Chantel's going-away party and got drunk for the second time in my life, and was still drunk at 6 a.m., when I scraped through the azalea hedge, opened my bedroom window and tumbled into my room over my old toy box? You must remember it - you were lying in my narrow twin bed, not asleep, just waiting.

Do you remember the time we stayed up late - so far past my bedtime; I was younger then - and sat on the screened porch drinking Constant Comment tea and waiting for a much-anticipated meteor shower? I remember. I remember how quiet it was, and how completely dark. So dark that I could not really see you even right next to me. It was so dark that we whispered when we spoke. And we gasped at every shooting star.

I've spent a lot of time agonizing over the yearlong chore of cleaning your house after you died. I've accepted the fact that, no matter how I try to describe it in terms of labor hours or metric tons of trash and precious artifacts, no one no one no one will ever understand what that job was like. I just don't have the words yet to paint it real. I can't properly say just how angry I was, how sad, how ragged and scorched.

And all the while I was so grateful that you didn't die in that house, as you had told me so many times you feared.

Have I told you - have I told anyone- that every reciept and silver ring I sorted and cataloged made me love you and miss you and curse you with an intensity I really thought might crush me some days?

Probably. That sounds like something I would say more than once.

That is the story I've been telling of that house for two years now. But that is not our home's complete story. And I'm sorry for making such a lop-sided illustration.

I've left out too much. I've left out jumping on the bed when I was really too big to engage in that. I've left out the two weeks when you had strep throat and Dad quarantined you in Thor's room and wouldn't go in there because he didn't want to catch what you had. I went in. I played your nurse in little ways, just like you played my nurse all through the years before we moved into that house - the years when I was sick and in the hospital and coming home with tubes and dressings and unexplained fevers.

This was the first house we'd ever lived in where I was never sick like that. You must have breathed just a little easier. Just a little.

This house and my wellness, along with a couple thousand dollars, must have seemed like a blade of sunshine slicing through the dank cell of your marriage to someone who did not really love you because he just couldn't love much of anyone. It must have looked like the sweet prospect of Something Better.

You know what? You did a good job. No, you did an amazing job.

You began as a stay-at-home mom with $2,000 in the bank, and you became a well-respected professional who raised two children who are both happily married. You sent one child to get an advanced degree at an Ivy League school, and you gave the other everything she would need to survive corporate life, cancer and whatever else is on the horizon. (You heard me, Life. Bring it, bitch.)

And you were loved. You are loved. Your story is a good one, and we'll all tell it as real as we can.

Now sit with me, here by long the windows next to the front door. Let's remember the time we stood here together during a hurricane watching the trees whip dangerously close to the roof then careen in the other direction.

Remember the way we all just felt safe? That storm was beating the city, but we might as well have been miles away. We watched through those windows with the vague interest of someone watching Jim Cantore on television.

Hmmm. Would you look at that.

It wasn't the house that made us feel safe, Mom. It was the woman who chose it.

Maybe now we can open the door, step into the courtyard with one hand on the brass doorknob (remember how you made this door look like a wrapped present one Christmas?) and pull the door shut behind us.

You have to pull hard until you hear it click. There you go. That's it.

Comments

[raehan]

Wow. That gave me chills.

Very powerful.

[Michelle]

That was simply beautiful...Thank you for sharing.

[stepblog]

That made me cry, Bettie. Beautiful. Thanks.

[Lila]

Crying, crying, crying over here...

[Elizabeth]

What a beautiful tribute to your Mother.

[Keri]

Mothers are homemakers. Yours was world-class. You were truly blessed. Your mother may no longer with you in body, the house now becoming a haven for another family and the memories may be all that remain. But memories are all we are supposed to keep. They make us who we are. Treasure yours.

Your craft with words is unique and so poignant. I LOVED this... "When I think about that time - back before their divorce when our homelife was pretty ordinary (or at least had a hard candy shell of ordinariness covering the rich, chocolatey center of depression, alcoholism and dysfunction) - I can't think of our house in anything but Suburban Family terms."

wow! My words are insufficient to describe how your writings touch me.

[The mumbler]

Hey. That was damn beautiful. I sure miss Mom

[Marie]

Crying here too. That's stunningly beautiful. Thank you for the wonderful tribute to your Mom.

[Thor]

Thank you!