Genuine Disingenuousness

In celebration of graduation, parents were tasked with writing a letter to their seniors. Normally I find this kind of forced sentiment very disingenuous. And as I sat down to write my letter, I was a bit disgruntled at being strong armed into such an endeavor, though I can usually pen such a thing with very little effort. Which was exactly why it bothered me. It wouldn't REALLY express all the ways in which parenting has shaped me as a person, or adequately convey my feelings about my child. I thought it a sham; cheap and meaningless. But I sat down to write it nonetheless, as I could not let my child be the only one without a letter. To my surprise...the words did not flow so easily. 

I struggled. I cried. I revised and edited. I cried some more.

When I finally had something down on paper, it didn't seem empty to me at all. I hope my son feels the same way.

Dear (no longer) Pre-Pubescent One, 

I’ve probably started this silly thing seven times. I don’t really know how parents sum up in a couple hundred words, what the journey of parenthood has been like. For that reason, I’m kind of annoyed by this, though I know it is well intentioned. It almost cheapens what an amazing, horrible, awesome, terrifying, confusing, joyful experience parenting really is. But I’m going to try, because I don’t want you to be the only kid without a letter. And I’m sure some kids will have envelopes stuffed with letters from family, family, friends, church leaders, coaches. But all you have is us. It’s always been that way for you and your brother and I’ve always felt sad that you didn’t have lots of cousins to grow up with, grandparents just around the corner, and close ties to the other adult role models in your life.

But I want you to know that if Grandma was still here, she would be all over this letter writing thing. She’d have had her letter written, stamped and in the mail three weeks before the deadline. She’d probably include photos, school projects and a lock of baby hair too. She might have even included a batch of spicy pretzels just for you.

So, since you only get one letter, I’m going to try to make it a good one. Words are my thing, and I’ve written a lot of them over the years about you and your brother. But somehow, when it comes to writing them directly to you…I’m at a loss. Because again, trying to explain to a kid how much they mean to their parents, is kind of like trying to explain to a piano player what it’s like to throw a perfect pitch; there’s just no perspective. Someday, when you have children of your own, everything will be clear to you. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of both childhood and parenthood; you have absolutely no idea how fiercely, deeply, and enduringly you are loved and how numerous the sacrifices made on your behalf until the time to say “thank you” and “I’m sorry” has passed. 

You were my first baby. You made me a mother. I had three years to spend being only that. Until I die, I will always remember those days as some of the happiest of my life. I had no  responsibilities, no obligations, and no commitments, other than being your whole world. That’s an amazing gift for a Mom and one I feel incredibly privileged to have been given. We read, we zoomed cars, we built block towers and we knocked them down, we sang songs. Housework didn’t matter. We had no schedule to keep. We spent long lazy days doing nothing more important than playing “this little piggy”. It was perfect. We had such fun and you always thought I was pretty cool. I thought you were pretty cool too. Sometimes I miss that little boy a lot. But then I realize…he’s standing right in front of me. How can that be? Sometimes, it really doesn’t seem possible that the handsome young man I live with now, is the same little boy that I once rocked to sleep. But I’m trying to look at it as a new chapter beginning rather than an old one ending. I think life has a lot in store for you and we’re truly excited to see it all happen. 

Dad and I are so proud of you. I know we don’t say it enough…I’m not sure any parent ever does. You are a kind, thoughtful, intelligent and responsible young man. I hope we have taught you what you need to know about how to get the best for yourself.  Know and believe that you deserve nothing less. It’s every parent’s worst fear, that they’ve failed their kids in that respect. Just remember, sometimes, good people do foolish things, stupid things, even criminal things. It's how we learn and grow. You can't learn to pick yourself up if you never fall down. I did, Dad did, and you will too. It’s OKAY. But never let the thoughtless mistakes of your youth define who you are or change your opinion of yourself, because it will never change our opinion of you. We will always believe in you. And even though we know it’s time for you to stand on your own two feet, we will always be here to pick you up, dust you off, and kiss your boo-boos, just like when you were little. 

Love Always, 

Mom and Dad. 

A Dearth of Awesomeness

There's no pretty way to say this, so I'll state it plainly: Mother's Day without a Mother sucks.

I have been angry for six weeks. That's the period of time in which we are typically bombarded with Hallmark card, jewelry, chocolate and flower delivery commercials.

I don't want a card. Talk is cheap but cards are not. I find it ridiculous to pay five dollars for some schlocky sentiment and a hastily scribbled signature. I can do that myself. See? Dear you, You are terriffic. I like you. I may get angry and say things I don't mean like the other day when I called you a hopeless calorie whore for eating four of those dutch caramel wafers, but that doesn't change how I feel about you. Well, maybe sometimes. But most of the time I really like you and think you're terriffic. Love yourself. Love, Yourself.

Geez, I should be getting paid for my Hallmakr skillz.

I don't want jewelry, particularly not jewelry that looks like boobs and a butt. "Open Heart Collection" sounds far more sophisticated than "Boobs and Butt Collection" but it is what it is. If calling myself by another name would confer upon me the desirable attributes that I wish to posess, I would call myself  Princess Beautimous Eternally Youthful of the Fabulously Rich clan. But I would still be  middle aged, middle class, with a muffin top, crows feet, and chin hair that proliferates far too quickly. And also, curiously, seems to be invisible until it is at least four inches long.

I don't want Chocolate. I work for Weight Watchers for fuck's sake. I get two pounds leeway. I can gain two pounds just thinking about chocolate, three by looking at it, four by smelling it, five if I consider eating it, and if I actually eat it? I have to start doing that thing where you loop a rubber band through the button hole on your jeans to make them sitting down pants again.

I don't want flowers. They die. It's insane to spend $100 dollars on stuff that dies. Or poops. But that's another post for another day.

You know what I liked? Those little flower pots with the fingerprint lady bugs on them. Hunks of lumpy plaster with misshapen hand imprints. Bookmarks adorned with foam flowers sporting toothless photo centers. Wonderful, horrible poems written in carefully constructed capital letters on dash lined paper. Clusters of  weeds in a dixie cup.

And having a Mom. I really liked having a Mom.

And now I don't and it sucks.

So pardon me if I don't respond to all your "My Mom is Awesome" posts. It's nothing personal. I'm sure your Moms are awesome. But acknowledging your Moms' awesomeness hurts me in a way I find difficult to put into words. Most of the time, I can ignore the lack of motherly awesomeness in my life. But all the relentless awesomemongering forces me to think about how awesome my Mom was and how she's not able to be awesome anymore and how much I took her awesomeness for granted while she was here and how I'll now never be able to express to her how much her awesomeness shaped my life.

Sometimes it's just easier to be angry.

So I am.

I should be over it by Father's Day.
 

They Called Him Pork Chop

After the response from my post about self  harm, which both surprised and delighted my son, he begins to comprehend the power and the scope of social media in a way he never has before. Which is kind of ironic, considering my readership is pretty nil these days. He asked me to post this video on my blog.  Because in his mind, it's all related. Which breaks my heart in ways you can't even begin to imagine. It makes me cry. I'm crying now and I've already seen it twenty times. I'm not crying because the video is so evocative and poignant....it is. Ohhhh, it is. But I'm crying because it is so deeply meaningful to him. I wish it wasn't. 

Watch, share, act. Please.

 

His favorite line from this video..."If you can't see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror."

He thought that was genius. I do too.

No More

We forget the little things.

I sometimes feel an inordinate amount of panic when I think of all those really good moments that have escaped into the deep dark abyss of a perpetually overloaded Mommy brain. I used to try to chronicle everything. But it's impossible. There is too much.

The sigh gulp, sigh gulp cadence of  a nursing baby at your breast. The smell of diaper cream and baby lotion that permeates everything. The sweet ache of holding a sleeping child in your arms and how profound the trust that makes such a thing possible. The sheer delight on a toddler's face when he knocks down the tower of blocks. The way that never gets old or any less thrilling. How a storybook is just as captivating the hundredth time as it was the first. How fiercely little arms can cling. How deeply and unconditionally little hearts can love.

But there are things that stand out in my memory with such stark clarity that I will never forget, even when my babies are grizzled old men with histories independent of the one I have written for them.

Bloody t-shirt day was one of those.

There had been signs.

Repeated indignant calls from the P.E. teacher reporting that my son would not dress out for gym. I didn't find that alarming. He was a pudgy kid who had been incessantly bullied. Why on earth would he make himself so vulnerable as to expose to the world a body he had learned to loathe?

My kitchen shears disappeared. But there are always projects and cutting implements are in high demand when resources are shared. They bounce around from room to room and almost never reside in their rightful place.

Holes appeared in the cuffs of long sleeved shirts, through which to loop thumbs. As a child of the eighties, I knew full well that  fashion trends are often quite bizarre and arbitrary, so again, I didn't question. WE wore our clothing backwards for heaven's sake.

He began to eschew no show socks and opted for crew length instead. I didn't realize that socks held such significance. If there's anything that you take from this, make it that. Socks matter.

The bloody t-shirt though....that I couldn't deny.

I was in an irritated frenzy, pawing through books and DVD cases and crumpled clothing and empty chip bags and (dear God what IS that??? ) dirty underwear looking for a library book that had been missing for ages and for which we had now been assessed a replacement fee. I had worked up a full head of annoyed steam about the mess and the book. I muttered to myself and mentally drafted the dialogue we would have later.

From beneath the bed I pulled something stiff and brown.

At first I was confused. It didn't feel or look like any article of clothing that he owned. It was clearly a garment of some kind, but why the odd color? Why the strange texture? Why the....SMELL???

The odor that reached my nose carried the stink of truth.

Fresh meat.

Death.

BLOOD.

Ohmygoditscoveredinblood. Heshurtheshurtheshurt. Lotsandlotsandlotsofblood.

From my baby. From my baby. From. My. BABY.

I knew then. The suspicion that had been slowly germinating suddenly bloomed into full awareness along with the real scope of the problem. This was serious. There was a lot of blood and it was no small injury he was inflicting upon himself.

Dear God WHY??? Why??? Why, why, why, why, why?

I sank to ground amid the mess; crumpling papers, cracking cases and snapping pencils, not caring at all as I sobbed into that disgusting shirt. My tears mixed with the blood, which stained my hands an aged and putrid crimson. It was horrifying. Utterly, completely, inconceivably horrifying.

Those were very dark days. I can't even begin to describe the depth of despair, both his and ours. He was angry, ashamed and belligerent. We were terrified, confused and desperate.

I knew he wasn't trying to kill himself, only replace one kind of pain with another. But I feared he would one day cut too deeply and do too much damage. I feared finding him dead, his rich red blood pooled around him like a superhero cape; Captain Exsanguination lying in my son's bed.

I tried to hide anything that would penetrate flesh. But addiction and need spawn ingenuity and stealth. It was a wholly fruitless endeavor. The powerlessness was profound and paralyzing. I could not fix this. I could not heal the wounds on his body or the ones in his heart. I could not ease the torment in his brain. I could do nothing.

I needed people more knowledgeable than myself to deal with this. I had to trust the care of my child to people who knew nothing about him, other than what it said in his case history. I had to relinquish control and have faith, neither of which come very easily to me. But I had no choice and neither did he. He screamed and begged and raged, his tears both defiant and pleading.

"You don't care about me. You just want me out of the way. You can't make me. I hate you."

Then...

"Please don't make me go. I'm not crazy. I won't do it again. I love you."

I had to turn a deaf ear to the pleas of my child.

Think about that for a minute.

You can't even imagine a moment like that until you are in it. Every part of you that is connected to your child; heart, mind, body, and soul, compels you to do whatever it takes to stop the tears, ease the pain, offer comfort and provide protection...from the very thing that he needs to get well. You have to TURN OFF the part of you that makes you a mother and make decisions using only logic and reason.

Once, naively, I thought pushing his body from mine was the hardest thing I had ever done or ever would do.

I was wrong.

13 months have passed since he last hurt himself, something he is very proud of. He has worked hard to overcome his compulsion. He has developed tools to cope with the bad feelings. He has been committed to using them. He is getting stronger.

But he is not better.

Last night, as I lay in bed, nearly comatose with exhaustion but as yet unable to quiet my thoughts enough to sleep, there was a knock at the door.

I did not look up as my son entered.

"What is it?" I asked wearily.

"Mom, I fucked up. Help."

That got my attention.

I looked up to see him holding his wrist in one hand, blood dripping from beneath his clenched fingers.

Calm, be calm, don't freak out, don't freak out.

"Well, let me see."

I set about the business of assessing the damage and dressing the wound. I was very matter of fact. He was mostly silent.

Only one cut. Not too deep. He stopped. He stopped. He stopped.

"Do you want to talk about it"?

He did. No more secrets, no more lies, no more shame.

No more bloody t-shirt days.


(Addendum: (not quite so) Diminutive One has read this piece and given his approval for me to post, which, in my opinion, makes him one of the bravest people I know. He wants to raise awareness and get people talking about self harm. We hope this post will help. He also wanted me to mention that the incident that prompted the cutting, didn't really bother him nearly so much as the cutting itself. He was angry with himself for relapsing. But he has resolved to forgive himself and determined to move forward.)

I'll See Your Apocalypse And Raise You A Human Triumph

Oh. Em. Gee. I am sick to DEATH of the "end times" rhetoric.
 

Listen people...the world is in no worse shape than it was a century ago. And people are no more evil than they were a century ago. I can't argue that it seems that way sometimes, but I really think it's just the ever widening sphere of digital information and the increasingly invasive and exploitive nature of the media. We have global awareness now, in a way that was never possible in generations past. We are Facetime, Skype, YouTube aware. We are realtime, high definition, multiplayer aware.

A hundred years ago, we might never have heard about the tragedy in Boston. Fifty years ago, it might have been reported on the nightly news by Walter Cronkite, perhaps made the front page of our local newspaper. We could turn one off and throw the other way. We weren't bombarded by information and images twenty four hours a day until all we could do was bury our heads in the sand like a nation of weeping ostriches to escape the the horror and the heartbreak. My God...look how long it took the world to realize what Hitler was doing. Nobody knew. Nobody could. So the scope of that atrocity was far greater than anything most of us have experienced in our lifetime, even 9/11.

In reality, our world is shrinking and the people in it are evolving. Our past is far more blood soaked than our present. Crack open any history book. Hell, crack open the Bible. They are full of lunatics, maniacs and deviants of every variety. And it's also full of people who elevated and revered them and  then rode their whackadoodle coattails into the history books. 

You honestly don't even have to look very hard to find examples. Elizabeth Bathory? Caligula? Ghengis Kahn? Mao Zedong. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler? Those are just a few noodles in the soup of our insanity and bloodlust. 

One of my facebook friends once asked....if time travel became a reality someday, to which era would we choose to travel? Now, as a full blown nostalgia addict, I'm a master at romanticizing bygone eras. But when I really thought about it, I had to admit that some would make me merely reluctant; others, downright terrified. Because once, bigotry, hatred, oppression, injustice, exploitation and violence were an accepted and expected way of life. Can you imagine being a woman in pretty much any era prior to 1970? A black man? A homoseuxal of either gender? Sometimes minorities were simply ignored and marginalized, but sometimes they were treated as subhuman chattel. No thank you. 

But we ARE learning to respect and love one another. We ARE learning about equality and colorblindness and social responsibility. The fact that a marriage equality is even at issue is proof of that. Once, such a thing would have been patently unthinkable. As would other social conventions that we have come to embrace in the new millenium. Women supporting families? Running businesses? Making laws? PREPOSTEROUS! Integrated schools and businesses? INCONCEIVABLE! Political and Religious freedom? HERESY! Democracy? IMPOSSIBLE!  

The fact that we question things that were once simply accepted, such as human trafficking, Apartheid, organized crime, dictatorship, child abuse and exploitation....

You see what I mean? We've come a very long way. Hitler could never come to power in today's world. People will argue with that. But I will defend that stance with gusto. Could. Not. Happen. And these days Elizabeth Bathory would likely be diagnosed with some kind of mental illness, medicated to the gills and put in restraints for the rest of her life.

Yes, evil people walk among us. They always will. But for every evil person who rigs a bomb to explode during a time honored and iconic event, there are a hundred whose kindness and humanity shines through the pall of hatred and violence to demonstrate what mankind is really about. And the Boston tragedy is a testament to that. Nobody stopped to ask the injured the state of their soul, the slant of their politics, or the nature of their sexuality before offering aid. They just did what needed to be done, because nothing else mattered other than the fact that fellow human beings were suffering and terrified.

These are NOT the end times. In fact, I'd say we are witnessing the dawn of a gentler era; one of social, political and more importnatly....humanitarian reform. It's going to take a a long, long, long time to reach it's zenith, but at least it's on the horizon. I really do believe that. 

I don't think God is angry enough to wipe us out of existence. If he's up there at all, (and you know my opinion on that) I think he might actually be kind of proud. His thoughts are probably along the lines of..."Well, they're slow learners but I do believe they're finally beginning to catch on. Maybe in another millenia or so....."

End Times. Puh. Leez.

Time Passages

My oldest son is turning 18 this weekend. I've been struggling for weeks to put my feelings into words. Normally, this is not a problem for me. But lately, my brain is too full of other nonsense to achieve brilliance. Or even, truth be told, run of the mill flippancy, which can do a passable imitation of brilliance in the right circumstances. I went digging through my archives looking for inspiration and I found this piece, which I wrote five years ago. Surprisingly, the feelings haven't changed much. The same disbelief, the same sense of surrealism, the same feeling of desperation when you realize it's all going too fast and you can do nothing to slow it down., the same longing to have the simpler times back, even if it's just for a moment. There's really no need to re-write it. This piece says it all. Happy Birthday Jase. And I really do like the young man I've discovered, even if I occasionally want to strangle him.

Time Passages

It's strange how a small thing can suddenly drive home the point that time is passing so swiftly.

I know of course, that time marches relentlessly on. I see my sons changing before my eyes. I launder their ever bigger clothing. I solve their ever bigger problems. I wrestle with ever more complicated issues; ones that I never anticipated when they were small and sweet and had no will of their own beyond filling their bellies and their diapers.

But occasionally a moment or an action or a memory will spark that knowledge until it is a blazing inferno of awareness. And suddenly it's right there in front of us where we can't ignore it...life really is going by dreadfully fast.

It can be a big thing or a small thing; a silly thing, or a serious thing. Usually it isn't the thing itself, but the memories associated with it.

For instance, I remember being heavily pregnant and obsessed with clouds. Yes, clouds.

Pre-Pubescent One was being moved from the nursery in preparation for his brother's arrival. I had a lot of mixed feelings about that, and among them, guilt. Those of you who have more than one child know this feeling. It's not entirely rational, but it's very powerful.

I was deliriously happy about the new baby. But I was sad that the special time I had shared with my firstborn was coming to a close. Never again would he have my undivided attention. Nor would the new baby, for that matter. My boys forever after would have to share; my time, my attention and my love.

I felt somehow as if I had ruined everything.

What a ridiculous notion. But no matter how much I tried to talk myself out of those feelings, they persisted and grew, until I was a seething ball of weepy, hormonal confusion; happy one moment, sad the next, with no discernible emotional middle ground.

To assuage the guilt of evicting Pre-Pubescent from not only his room, but his crib as well, I convinced myself that he needed a new sanctuary; one of transcendant cuteness.

Again, it was a very silly and fanciful notion, but it helped a little.

And so, I became obsessed with creating the perfect room for Pre-Pubescent One.

I found an adorable wall border with Teddy Bears and Dalmations and Firetrucks. It struck me as the epitome of little boy-dom, and I was completely charmed. I planned the decor of the room around the border, which was a fairly simple matter, as most of the colors were bold and bright primary shades.

The problem arose when I decided that I should do a wall treatment to mimic the cloud like background in the border.

We painted the walls white and I found a glaze in the exact shade of blue that I needed. I experimented with every conceivable fabric and every conceivable technique to achieve the perfect degree of "fluiffiness".

"Fluffiness." said Husband skeptically, when I explained. "How do you paint fluffiness?"

I showed him. He was impressed, but dubious about the amount of time and effort it would take to cover all four walls with the required fluffiness.

I figured out pretty quickly that it doesn't work if two people try to do a wall treatment. No two people have the same technique and it became very obvious where his portion ended and mine began. I told him that in order to look just right, it had to be perfectly seamless. I would have to do it myself.

"Look." I pointed out. "See how your clouds are...heavier? Darker? They look like rain clouds. I need light, wispy, summer day clouds."

By this time I think Husband was pretty convinced I had lost my marbles along with my waistline. He looked at me for a moment, contemplating, I'm sure, whether he should humor me, or seek the assistance of a mental health professional.

He decided to humor me. He surrendered his carefully engineered facsimile cloud putter onner, and left me to my own maniacal devices.

It took me an entire week to finish that room. Then I had to go back with a smaller cloud putter onner, because the big one left a line of demarcation along the window and door frames. I painted over some spots because I wasn't happy with them.

And still, I could see where I had started and where I had stopped and I was not at all pleased. The paint was darker where I had used a freshly dipped putter onner and no matter how many times I went back over it, it just didn't seem right. My pursuit of seamlessness was driving me slowly, but surely insane.

They are the hallmark of my pregnancies, these obsessions. Some women get horrible cravings, some women get incredibly er...amorous, some women throw up...I develop obsessions.

Remind me to tell you about the time that I, nearly full term with what would turn out to be a 9 lb., 5 oz. fetus, decided that I absolutely HAD to have a matching robe and nightgown for the hospital and dragged Pre-Pubescent One through the mall for hours in search of one, despite the fact that he was having the mother of all tantrums.

Anyway, this one was a doozy.

But eventually, exhaustion and common sense won out and I had to concede that it was good enough.

Not only was it good enough, but once I was able to stop nitpicking, I realized it was pretty adorable, if I do say so myself.







Ten years have passed since then, and his room has remained unchanged for much of that time. But two years ago, I reluctantly took down the border to appease his growing sense of maturity and ease his embarassment.

Since then, he's endured the cloud walls without much complaint. But we've been promising him for two years that we would redecorate in a more suitably masculine theme and finally, he asked if we might be able to have his room done in time for his 13th birthday, for which he is planning a sleepover.

Husband and I realized we could postpone it no longer and this week, we tackled the job. It was a big one, because everything needed to be sanded, including the walls to insure that the clouds would cover and the texture would not bleed through.

As we worked, I was focused only on getting the job done. We hate to paint, you see. We loathe it with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. It's so tedious, so nitpicky, so BORING and so messy.

But when it came time to put that first stroke of fresh paint on the wispy, azure blue walls, I felt a wave of pure melancholy. I remembered laboring over this room with Diminutive One warm and heavy in my belly. I remembered how small Pre-Pubescent One looked in his enormous new big boy bed. I remembered how he stood before me the next morning wearing a pull-up and a grin as he proudly and earnestly told me he had spent the entire night there and didn't go back to the crib even one time, not even to look.

I wanted it back.

Just for a moment. Just to feel his spindly little limbs folded in my lap, and his bath fresh hair tickling my nose and to breathe in all his perfect innocence, and appreciate it the way I couldn't back then, not knowing how fleeting it really is.

As the cloudy blue walls slowly disappeared, it struck me as remarkably metaphorical, if walls can truly be a metaphor for childhood lost and adulthood not yet gained. They are no longer cloudy, but blank and smooth, waiting for the rest of his life to be inscribed upon them.

They will hold posters, and signs and notes and all kinds of memorabilia. And then, when he leaves home, they will be blank once more.

When we finished I looked around. It felt at once completely familiar and thoroughly alien. This, I thought...this is no little boy's room. This is the room of a young man.







And I realized that I need to stop mourning the little boy who was, and discover the young man who will be. I think I'm going to like him.

And that little boy? He'll always be there, in his cloudy room and his dinosaur pajamas waiting for me to tuck him in. I'm going to give myself permission to visit him there every now and then...to snuggle down in his big tiny bed and hold him close to me while I read him something sweet and silly.

Wait for me there, used to be boy. I'll be back again soon.

Behind Closed Doors

I remember when the house was not yet a home.

It was dirty and it smelled bad. It had horrifically ugly wallpaper and even uglier carpeting, though the pattern was hard to see through the years of grime that had accumulated. It looked like varying shades of brown, so we were all quite astonished to see vivid yellow and saucy lime green in the tracks left by the steam cleaner. The yellow and green plaid wallpaper made a little more sense after that discovery.

We would go to the house in the evenings after my Dad got off work, so they could clean it up and make it habitable. Apparently, several different species of animal had lived in the house along with the human occupants, though whom was more responsible for the level of filth is difficult to say. There was feces in abundance as well as animal skins, feathers and even an empty turtle shell or two, which looked very forlorn.

The basement was dark and dank and downright terrifying. My sisters and I refused to venture down the narrow steps into that subterranean hell, mostly because the furnace looked like a big monster in the weak light, which cast multi-limbed shadows that reached out to us.

But something about that house spoke to my mother. She saw something besides filth and decay. She knew there was something beautiful beneath it. From the day she decided that THIS house was the one, she loved it with a deep and abiding fierceness. I don't think my Dad ever really understood or shared her attachment to the house, but he agreed to the purchase nonetheless. I'm sure he must have had grave misgivings about that.

At night while my parents cleaned, my sisters and I played in the room that was, for many years, our playroom. My mother erected a round, expanding playpen type thing that must have been a death trap and would almost certainly be outlawed today, to keep my baby sister from wandering off while they worked. When it grew dark, we got our sleeping bags and placed them within that deadly circle, with the baby in the middle. We drifted off listening to my mother and father laughing, talking and singing to the country music that played on the beat up transistor radio we brought with us.

"When we get behiiiiiiiiind clooooooosed doors. And you let your haaaaaaiiiiiir hang down..."

"Shhhhh! Gary, stop...the girls will hear!"

"No they won't...they're fast asleep..."

Giggles and a crash. Then some silence. I didn't understand the silence then. I do now. It makes me smile. But it makes my heart hurt too.

Forty years. Forty years it took for that place to live up to the potential my Mother saw there.

For many years, there was just no money. They had kids to feed, a mortgage to pay, doctor and dentist bills, cars to keep running and a monster furnace which had to be supplied with oil through the long and harsh Wisconsin winter, lest it demand that a hapless child be fed into it's gaping metal maw ((shudder)).

But she kept it as pretty as she could and always scrupulously clean. She put out lace doilies, she draped the threadbare furniture with pretty sheets, she disguised the balding carpets with runners and throws, and she hung her crosstitch on the walls.

She and the house waited.

And then, when the kids were gone, and with them some of the bills; when the responsibilities of parenthood ceased to be such a heavy burden, when her time was once again her own...then...then the house began to shine.

She scraped wallpaper and ripped out carpets. She stripped and sanded every inch of woodwork in that house. If you know anything about the Craftsman style, then you know that was a Herculean task. She plastered and painted and textured and rag rolled and stenciled and sewed. Of course my Dad helped her. But for him I don't think it was quite the labor of love that it was for her. It was just labor. A means to an end. For my Mom, I think it was almost like giving birth again; recreating life out of something dead and forgotten.

It was breathtaking when she finished with it. And every single inch of that house was full of her.

It was so strange when I walked into that house the first time after she died. She was gone. I could feel it. But still so very present. I couldn't make sense of it, not then, not now.

For forty years, that house has been my home. My going back to place. I fled to that house many times during my young adulthood. Fired, spurned by a lover, sad, out of sorts, broke, lonely....I headed back home to sleep in the same bed I'd always slept in. To quiet my soul and to feel safe.

And now it will be sold to the highest bidder. My entire childhood is up for sale.

I just don't know if I can take it. I know I have to accept it. It's part of life. And I have to move on. But my heart and my mind can't agree on how to handle it. 

I had a dream recently.

I was wandering through the house as it was when we first bought it; dirty, dark and somehow sinister, though I never thought of it that way when I was a kid...except for the basement. I kicked aside snake skins and turtle shells and feathers. I could hear country music playing faintly from somewhere in the house and also somebody weeping. I knew it was my mother and I began to search for her, wandering from room to room. In reality, there are only 7 rooms in the house, but in my dream, there was a vast and endless warren of rooms to search through. I began to panic, thinking I would never find her. I could feel it tighenting my throat and making my heart pound in my ears.

Finally I reached a door, behind which, I was certain, I would find my mother. It wouldn't open at first and I tugged and tugged, growing more and more frantic. Suddenly it wrenched open and there was my mother in her bedroom. There was no furniture other than the bed on which she sat. Her concentrator was on the floor beside the bed but the hose dangled from her lap. Her head was in her hands.

"Mom....?"

She raised her head and looked at me.

"What happened to my house?" she asked. There was bewilderment and deep sadness in her voice.

"I don't know. It was fine the last time I was here."

"It's not the same. This isn't how I left it. "

"I know, but we can fix it up again. I'll help you."

She shook her head

"No. It's too late. It's too late."

I bent to embrace her, but she evaporated before I could get my arms around her. The oxygen hose dropped to the floor and landed on my feet. I stood there in the empty room listening to faint country music. It wasn't until that moment that I could make out any words.

"When we get behiiiiiiiiiiind closed doors......"

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Addendum: I managed to find a few pics. They are not very good, because I was too lazy to scan them and so I just took pictures of the pictures. There are better ones that she sent me as the transformation progressed, but all our pictures are currently in boxes stacked up in the dining room. But, nevertheless, you can see the beauty of the house and the painstaking care she put into it.

The dining room, easily the most beautiful room in the house. She stripped and restained every inch of woodwork in there. Prior to that it had a very dark patina, was cracked and flaking and somewhat sticky in places. So many Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays and family get togethers spent in this room, lingering around this table; talking and lauging. 

 Dining room decorated for Christmas. I remember arriving late at night one Christmas holiday, having driven 900 miles. We were dead on our feet, with tired and cranky children in tow. I walked into the dining room (had to walk through it to get to the living room and upstairs) which was decorated as seen below. She had candles burning and a soft glow suffused the room. Immediately, I felt at peace. Home. I was home.

The stairs to the second story. I don't think you can see it well here, but my Mom textured the walls all the way up the stairs as well as the entire upstairs hallway with very precise little swirls. It was ridiculously painstaking and time consuming. I would never have bothered with it. But she loved every minute.

Living room. Here you can see the gorgeous ceilings. They were once badly damaged by water, but thankfully, were able to be restored. They are original to the house, which was built in 1918, if I remember right. I could be thinking of my sisters house though. I need to look that up. You can also see the rag rolling treatment she did on the walls. She did THEE layers. Pink, blue and teal. It took her weeks. This was done in the 90's and was very trendy at the time. But she grew tired of it eventually and painted the walls a very pretty sage green. I was aghast. So much time and effort, only to paint over it?!? But she didn't mind. To her, the house was a living thing, growing and changing.

This isn't a picture of the house, exactly. But my mother refinished this dresser with a burled faux treatment pattern, which you can seem more clearly in the bottom picture. It shows how meticulous she was and how she never balked at spending any amount of time and effort  to get the exact result she wanted. I would have tired of it long before it was finished and given up. But not her. This piece will be coming home with me.

The End.