House

This house is not the house where I spent my childhood, prenatal to ten, where I bounced out of my crib, hid under the sink, threw a puppy out the second story window saying, "Doggie fly." That house, but not the memories, was sold years ago.

This is the house where my first date rang the doorbell and picked me up, where I listened to Janis Joplin's "Pearl" on our stereo, watched "Dark Shadows" on summer afternoons, and shoveled the driveway in winter. I helped Dad plant the trees at this house, and this is where he fell from his recliner after having a massive, fatal heart attack 27 years ago.

We threatened to take Mom's power tools away, but we knew she'd just go buy new ones. Her favorite was the leaf blower, which she used to clean up the pine needles shed by the giant blue spruce which now towers over her driveway and sidewalk at 410 Camp St. When Dad and I planted this tree, it was two feet tall, and I could run and jump over it. Now, only Superman could perform this fete.

"You've got to hand to these rural women," the neighbor woman said to me on the morning of my mother's moving sale. "I'd see her out there with the weed trimmer and the blower. And she's such a tiny woman."

"Yes," I said. "She'll miss all that. But, she'll be safer now. Have less to worry about."

Mom was raised on worry and never weaned of it. "I heard that siren, and I prayed you were OK." "What if we get too much rain?" "What if it doesn't rain?" "What if I can't sell my house?" "What do I do if I sell my house?" etc." I believe she worries because she believes worry wards off bad things. She is convinced if she worries enough about something and puts herself through enough grief, it will ward off the actual bad consequence.

Praying and worrying seem to be one and the same. She seems to live in constant fear of something, and I try to think back to see if she was always like that, or if it is a result of old age and her inability to do the things she used to.

Old people seem to go one way or the other. They either get jolly and accepting, figuring that can't really control anything anyway, so they'd just as well go with the flow. Or, they get cranky and negative for the same reason. It's all perspective. Mom, recently, has taken the latter path.

She is never content.

No matter how much we help her pare down her life. Now, no house to worry about, no pine needles on the driveway, no taxes, no snowplow filling up her driveway, she still sounds overwhelmed with all she has to do. All that is put upon her. What, you ask?

Well, the doctor changes her medication every time she goes, so she has to change that; the garbage needs taking down to the basement; her drawers need cleaning and sorting; she's got too many papers to deal with, and on and on. Malcontent, i.e. depression. She just doesn't want to deal with anything anymore.

Yup. Until two years ago, Mom cut her grass by herself with a push mower she bought at Farm and Fleet. Then, of course the bushes needed trimming, so out comes the electric hedge trimmer. One winter about six years ago, Mom was using the snow blower to clear her driveway, and she slipped and fell backward and cracked a vertabrae. But, did that stop her for long?

Her physical activity used to help her feel in control of things. Helped her burn off frustrations.

The neighbor girl and I used to play duets on the old upright grand piano that Dad somehow lowered into the basement of this house. Our favorites were from a book of folk songs, like "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley," "The Bo Weevil," and "Jesse James." One time we put on a show for our parents and wore short outfits and pretended to be magicians. Dad had shown us how to coil a rope in the corner and hook a thread to the end of it. We ran the thread up the wall and over the pipes in the ceiling and tied the other end to my finger. While Deanna played snake charmer music on her recorder, I waved my arms around, wrapping the thread through around my hands to make the snake climb the wall. Deanna's mom got so freaked out she screamed and got up to run away. We couldn't have asked for a better response.

I also experienced my first date at this house. When the young man came to pick me up to go to the movies, my dad had jokingly set out a shotgun in the next room. We went to the movie, and he walked me home. More dates with others followed, but then I met THE ONE.

I guess Mom has had a lot to worry about in the past, and I was one of the major contibutors to that worry, and, sometimes, it was warrented. I do wish that she could relax and go with the flow, though. She deserves it.

When she sells that house, she will lose part of her independance and her past with my dad. We will still have the memories and each other. But, I know she will find many things to worry about because that's what Mom does. Maybe it's what keeps her alive.