My Mother's House

 The morning after I returned from burying my mother's ashes, it was raining. "We need the moisture," said the voice inside my head. It was my mother's voice. The same one that I know was the driving force behind my younger brother getting us to the airport four hours early for our flights back to California. 

That last sentence was a bit of a curiosity as I typed it. It started out as "four hours early for our flights back home," but I ran into a bit of a factual junction when it occurred to me that the place where I had just been was "home." It was the place where I was born. The place where my brothers and I grew up. Where we came together to put my mother to rest. 

It was my mother's house that existed as a base of operations. It was the place where we landed and sat around making plans for what we would do. And have a few fistfuls of jelly beans. It was the place where there was a spot to catch up on Time magazine or the New Yorker. Chances were good that there would be marathon gin games accompanied by endless conversations. It was a place where the cookies were. 

Twenty-five years ago when my mother moved up the road to a smaller version of the home where I spent my childhood, it was still a gathering place. The configuration of the art and the furniture was different to accommodate the smaller floor plan, but the tchotchkes all found a place in the new place. The walls were a gallery of art that documented a life spent absorbing the culture around her. It was a concentrated version of the house of my youth. 

On this last visit, we returned to a shell. The furniture, art and tchotchkes had been taken away. The floors had been renewed, so we all found a place to loll about on the fresh carpet. Mom wasn't there, but she was. We told stories about the olden days. We remembered. 

And I felt sad because I missed my mother's house. When I walked out into the rain in Oakland, I found a sense of hope: I remembered what was inside the place I now call home. The art on the walls. The tchotchkes I maintain. The cookie jar. It will never be my mother's house, but I am doing my very best to keep the memories alive. My mother's piano sits in the front room, and sometimes if I work at it, I can plink out a tune. 

I'm home again.