I live in the house I grew up in. When I share this with people they are so pleased for me — "Oh, how nice that must be."
"Oh yes," I say, "it's amazing!"
Although it is, in many ways, a good thing, it is also a burden that often feels more like a punishment than a gift.
My mother's ashes are in the backyard under an arbor that we, her seven grown children, built for her when she died of old age at 55.
The arbor is draped with beautiful, soft green kiwi vines that never grow kiwis. This is a perfect resting place for Mom, really — another great idea that will never come to fruition.
Inside, at the dining room table, is Mom's chair — an old, slightly wobbly classic hard rock maple dining chair with arms worn soft and smooth by years of sweatered elbows.
My mother spent many hours each day, and late into the night, sitting in that chair, a teacup and a cigarette at the ready. The table was always covered with piles of stuff: newspapers; notes on little pieces of scrap paper or paper plates; an overflowing ashtray; a writing journal; and dozens of novels purchased on the "cheap days" at the annual Library Book Sale. She was a voracious reader; she especially liked historic novels.
My mother was a tiny woman with very big ideas. If she had been wealthy she would have been considered eccentric, but she didn't have a nickel to her name.
Mom was a list maker — the table was always littered with her lists: grocery lists; to-do lists; lists of politicians she was going to write to; lists of plants to buy for that beautiful garden she was going to grow next spring.
All of Mama's books and magazines had old lists tucked between the pages, perhaps to hold her place; perhaps just a place to hold her lists! Over the years I have found several of these precious lists in the old books I am saving for her.
oleo
6 loaves of whole wheat bread
4 2lb. packages of hamburg
bag of onions
laundry soap
ask Kathie to pick up Steve
more yarn for sweater
call Dr.
10 pds. red potatoes
cigarettes
I sometimes wish that the house would burn to the ground.
Am I the caretaker? Am I supposed to finish all that she left undone? Could I forgive myself if I burned it down, adding ashes, with love and apology, to those under Mama's arbor?
