Winter

Forty-two years ago or so, my mother, brother, and I came back to this house, which had been in the family for a long time, and reclaimed it. My grandfather owned it and rented it out for years to various tenants after his parents, who had been living there, died. He and my grandmother relocated to Arizona to retire.

Both had lived almost their entire lives in the Midwest, but visited Arizona once a year or so to visit my great aunt, who had bought a home there. My grandfather took to it, loved the hot weather, the eternally blue skies, the mountains. He loved that he could pick a grapefruit from the tree in the backyard and have it for breakfast. My grandmother must have had a bit too much of the Midwestern girl in her. One brutally hot day, when the irrigation flooded the backyard in Scottsdale, and dead fish were found floating in the water, she told him, “We’re moving back.” I don’t know exactly where truth ends and fiction begins in this story, but it is the stuff of family legend. And, at any rate, we did move back, and I know it wasn’t my grandfather’s idea.

When we got back to Springfield, my grandparents bought a newer house on the west side of town, and we moved back here. As much as I loved my grandparent’s house, I knew I loved it mainly because of who they were, their presence that filled it, rather than the house itself. I loved this house – the house itself – more than theirs, and so did my mom, I think. Maybe because of its age and its history, and its long connection to our family.

The history of this house is part of my history, as it is my mom’s. She remembered – she remembers – picking apples from the ancient apple tree in the back that we had to cut down when we moved in, the grape arbor that used to be there (which I found vestigial evidence of when I explored the back yard for the first time many years ago), her grandfather, a stately old German with an huge mustache who in pictures resembles Otto von Bismark, sitting in a rocking chair smoking a pipe in the living room. She remembers the time the pot of cooking applesauce exploded and left the stain on the kitchen ceiling, sitting down at the piano to play some hymns just because if you could play the piano and you loved to sing hymns that was something you did to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon, and watching out the front window to see me drive off in my great aunt’s Plymouth Sport Satellite on the day I left for my first year of college. And about a million or two other things: goodbyes, happy reunions, tears, births, deaths, everything that gives life weight and substance.

I tell her that we’ll make sure a suitcase is packed for her for our trip up to Evanston tomorrow, and she says “It reminds me of church work camp in Berlin, after the war. We could only take one  bag with us.” Tomorrow morning we’ll leave, and she won’t see this place again. I will, if only to clean out her things. But this is the real goodbye to this old house, and I know it, and she knows that I know it. In a situation like that, what do you say, and how do you say it? I truly don’t know. Tomorrow, as we drive away, I'll probably say as little as possible, and just listen.

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The Drive Home

Somewhere in the course of, say, 40 or 50 years or so, everything gets turned around. You were dependent on your mother; now she's dependent on you. You have kids, and find yourself saying the same things to your mother that you say to your kids: Do you think that's a good decision? Have you thought this through? Who's going to pay for this?

We went to the Olive Garden for dinner tonight, because it's close, and because I know mom used to go there with her friend Marie for lunch after church on Sunday. Getting in and out of the restaurant was like one of the labors of Hercules. I was tempted to just sling her onto my back and carry her in; it would have made more sense. But she made a heroic effort, and, with the aid of a walker and my help, we finally got her situated at a table, and I finally got her out to the car after the meal was done. The food was mediocre, but the staff was attentive and helpful, so I won't be making any disparaging remarks about Olive Garden anytime soon. It was a good meal, and she enjoyed it.

Back at the nursing home, I sat on her bed and she in her wheelchair, and we talked. She grabbed my hand and sat there stroking it for a minute, as I talked about nothing, then she said, "I just want, at the end of my life, to be able to ...". It trailed off into nothing, and I sat there in silence, thinking, should I ask what she wants to do at the end of her life? But I know what she wants to do. She wants to hug her grandchildren. She wants to laugh a little, and be happy. She wants to sit on her couch and hear the familiar sound of the neighbor in his backyard next door, sawing wood and pounding nails, working on his latest project on a dull winter afternoon. She wants to go to church and sit through the sermon just to hear Rudy play the Bach postlude on the organ. And, after church, she wants to go to Steak 'N' Shake and have a milkshake. She wants some assurance that she hasn't been cut off, that she isn't adrift, as the end of her life draws closer.

I left soon after dropping her off, because I didn't know what more to say, and I needed a drink, and a cigarette, and I needed to be alone. It's not the most honorable thing in the world, but there it is. On the way out, I heard one woman in a wheelchair saying to another, "So nobody comes and visits you?" And even though I know myself, and I know my mom, and I know how much we care about each other, it was a tough drive home.

Peace at the Last

Just back from that crazy little fraternity of human suffering, the Emergency Room. The place where the middle-aged man with his ailing mother, the pretty young athletic-looking woman who seems always to be weeping when you glance at her (what is she crying about?), and the man who arrives in a wheelchair with a Black and Decker space heater box on his lap (why does he have it?) all have parity. I would have no patience in this situation, but the nurses and doctors we talked to were all polite, professional, helpful, and even, I would say, caring. Yes, it took seven hours to accomplish what probably could have been done in one, but I can't complain too much about that. What you want in this situation is the feeling that someone knows what they're doing and cares at least a little bit about what you're going through, and we got that.

Meanwhile, I'm back at my mom's house, and my mom is at Memorial Hospital getting a tube stuck up her nose. Far up her nose. I tried to warn her somewhat that this was going to happen, but then I thought I ought not to make too much of it. I had to separate my own feelings about how uncomfortable the procedure sounded from what she needed to hear at that time, which was reassurance: I'm here, I'll be back in the morning, we're all thinking of you. I didn't know what to say when I left beyond "I love you," and then I thought she might like to say a prayer. We said the old, familiar words, "O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen ..." Etc. etc. What a comfort there is in language that is strong, that somehow cuts to the heart of the matter. Its power always surprises me. I was glad I suggested it.

Now there is a thunderstorm brewing. Thunderstorms always seem bigger here, more threatening. I'm going onto the back porch to listen to it and watch it. Sleep well, everyone. O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy word is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

The Road Ahead

One morning not long ago I unexpectedly ran into my 12-year-old daughter Violet. I had taken the day off and was heading to the coffee shop to do some work prior to a doctor’s appointment. She was walking to school, shuffling along unhurriedly, trying to untangle the knotted cords of her earphones as she went.

Meetings like this are still novel because they’re infrequent. I run into friends, acquaintances, and former co-workers every now and then, but I don't often have chance meetings with my daughter. She’s still slowly, in small, incremental steps, emerging from the time of life when everything is planned for you by someone else, when parents are responsible for deciding what you do, when you do it, and who you do it with. The thought of her gradually reaching greater and greater degrees of independence is liberating, in one way. But it takes some getting used to.

When I saw Violet, I walked across the street to say hello. She smiled and said, in a singsong voice, “Hello, Daddy. Fancy meeting you here!” I smiled back at that; she has a winning way with me sometimes, this girl. We talked for a minute and I told her not to be late to school. She assured me she wouldn't,  though my fatherly angst – I am a very good worrier – told me to keep our conversation short, so that she could make it to school at her casual pace before the bell.

It’s a cliché, of course, but what parent hasn’t experienced it – the feeling that your children's future is unwritten, that they're on their way somewhere, and that, ultimately, they're getting there on their own? I felt it that morning when, after our little exchange, I caught a glimpse of Violet still fussing with the cords of her earphones just before she turned a corner towards school and disappeared into her day, and I into mine.