This place

As I look around my apartment this morning, and reflect on the last three months here, so many thoughts and feelings arise. In two days, I will be moving back home from here. I will be resuming an improved version of my former life with my family. It will be improved in the sense that I will be spending more time with them, due to the fact that I will continue to work remotely from home for my employer. It will be improved as well, because I decided to continue my march toward retirement in spite of the fact that my practicum didn't work out; this will leave me more time to volunteer and thus enrich and expand my life and my comfort zone.

But looking around me, I find my thoughts drawn to the lessons and the skills I have learned while living alone, and to the ups and downs of having nobody to answer to in this place except myself. A common thread through it all is the truism that you never know what you can do until you are forced to do it. I've been forced to sleep alone, eat alone, work alone, amuse myself alone, wash dishes alone, take out the trash by myself, do chores without anyone's help, and many more things. 

And I have learned that I can do it. I have learned that I can survive living alone. However, I have also learned that it is a lot easier to do when I have support and connection with the people who love me. My phone has been my lifeline while living here; I talk with my husband three to four times a day on average, and I speak with my brother about once every day or so. My relationships with both of them have deepened in the last three months. 

I also find myself remembering the events of the last three months and how this place has been my "home base" - a place I could be myself - a haven from the stress of being in a practicum with a supervisor who was not a good match for me, and whose attitude and words reminded me too much of childhood traumas I have never fully addressed. This place has housed me, fed me, given me a place to sleep, to think, to cry, and to grow. 

My plants - and other friends...

And soon, I must say goodbye to it. And I find - to my surprise - that I have mixed feelings about that! 

I will miss the freedom to keep my own schedule and be able to listen to music or TV programs (read: Netflix) without using earphones. I will miss the ability to sit in my chair without removing a cat or worrying about cat hair sticking into my clothing (or anyone else's who might visit me). 

But I know that I will be able to bring back certain things with me - like the rugs I bought for the apartment. The big one will adorn my home office and the smaller one will be placed beside my side of our bed. My plants will be in my home office and some will go to their original perches in the front hallway. Others will go back to my work office (the ones that are poisonous to cats). The paintings my family bought for me will also go in my home office - and from the rest of the furniture, I hope to be able to make a livable space in the other room in the basement.

And I am looking forward to being able to be close to my friends and living (instead of just visiting) with my family again. Yes, even the cats - I have missed those furry folks! My own bed beckons me, as does my kitchen (which is over twice the size of this little one in my apartment...) and the other creature comforts: cable TV, access to exercise equipment for when the weather is bad, and oh yes, did I mention my family? And friends? 

But this place - as eager as I am to move and get back to all I hold dear - still holds some sentiment. 

It will be hard to say goodbye.

Her Shoes

They caught me off guard the first time I saw them again. I was looking for something else, about three years ago, and there they were, as if she had slipped them off and thrown them in a corner. They were her sneakers, with a Velcro closing, from when she was about two. 

I found this picture on Pixabay.com - free!

And the sight of them - and the memory of whom they belonged to - stung at my eyes and swelled my throat until it felt tight. Images from when they fit her flooded back, unbidden, and I relived those days in a brief moment in time. It felt like months but in fact, it was only about a minute as I stood there, transfixed, the vivid film in my memory playing like some long-forgotten and perhaps discarded footage. I gathered it all and threaded it back on the reel, each ordinary moment now precious. The puddles she jumped in, while I scolded her for getting her shoes wet. The grass she ran through after her father had just mowed it, spreading grass stains on the toes. The tap-tap-tap of those little shoes beside me as I ran an errand with her while her older sister was in kindergarten. The tug on my hand as she stopped to inspect the rainbow of motor oil in a puddle of water, crouching down right beside it in those little shoes. I would have missed out on that beauty. She noticed it. 

She noticed everything. Nothing escaped her attention. She noticed the man sweeping the side of the parking lot, went to him and told him what an important job he was doing keeping the parking lot safe for people, and left him whistling as he continued along the edge of the walkway. She noticed the birds on the wires, the bumblebees backing out of flowers with their legs heavily laden with pollen, the squeaks in bicycle wheels, the chirruping sound of robins seeking mates, and so much more as those shoes carried her to her next discovery. 

In that one minute, I remembered, and the memory was painful because she was gone from us, and I missed her so very much!.  And part of me wanted to discard those little shoes because I didn't want my heart to hurt like it was hurting. But then I stopped myself - and I left them there, exactly where I had found them, because.... 

In spite of the hurt, the memory was somehow comforting. I did not want to toss away the fact that she had graced our lives - even for such a short time - with her indomitable zest for life and laughter, with her uncanny ability to see and believe the best about everyone, with her unshakable faith that everything would work out in the end. Those memories - painful as they were - were a reminder of the lessons she taught me about noticing, about being a friend, about being a person. 

And today, I came across those shoes again - and this time I picked them up, and put them together neatly, as if laying them out for her to wear again. Even though she had long since outgrown them, trading them in for flip-flops, tight jeans, eyeliner, and a driver's license ... to me, those little shoes were an ineffable symbol of the wonder and optimism she took with her from her childhood into her everyday young adult life, and of the legacy of "today" that she gave to me just by knowing her. 

They are a reminder that she is still with us. She still watches, still notices, still cheers us all on and believes the best for us. She is aware of every celebration, every anniversary and birthday, everything that is the stuff of everyday life for us. And she enjoys them with us. I have felt that giggling presence so many times I have lost count. 

And so now, when I see her shoes, I smile and say hello. 

This Old House

It doesn't look like much from the top of the hill where the old church sits.  It looked like even less when I was growing up, shaped like those children's drawings of their house, taller than it was wide, with windows that looked like rectangular eyes. Dad always said that it looked like a "two-storey outhouse." It was nothing more than part of someone else's house when it was moved to the property in 1954. Dad, providing for his oldest son and pregnant wife, closed off the open end and built the second storey. Though it served the purpose, it wasn't much to look at.

But it was home. All the rooms were cramped, and there was never enough space to put things, but there was always - miraculously - room for one more person to share a meal. I remember one family gathering where there were nineteen people there for the meal and we ate at two tables plus a child's table to accommodate everyone. 

When my brother's marriage ended, and he had nowhere else to go, they opened their arms wide and the house became home again to him. Dad realized that their other children had homes of their own, but that this child no longer had that luxury. He insisted that the family home pass to this son. My mother honoured his request only a few short years ago.

Photo "Childs Drawing Made With Chalk" courtesy of
m_bartosch at www.freedigitalphotos.net

Dad had always wanted to "build on." He never saw that day, but in 1994, about a year after he passed away, Mom got a contractor's license and contracted the work out herself. That's how the house got an extra bedroom, bathroom, dining room, and living room, all on the main floor, and the stairs got relocated to the "new part." This opened up the old living room to convert to what is essentially a bedroom with a TV in it.  This is where my brother sleeps now.

The walls of this old house have rung with laughter. They have dripped with grief, and fear, and anger. The memories haunt me when I go there to visit, so I focus on the people and not the memories. The last time I was there, Mom was still living there, but now she lives in a hospital room, waiting for someone else to die so that she can be placed in a nursing home ... not by her choice or any of ours. 

It will be hard going back there without her to greet me with a hug ... but go I will, to visit my brother. He and I and this house are linked together. We have all experienced a common history.

It is my brother's ability to manage the house and its expenses that occupies my thoughts lately. He is missing Mom, and having to deal with paying the bills and providing for his needs without help.  If all goes well, though, he will be able to handle this responsibility. 

Although I no longer call this old house "home", I still feel a connection to it, and I want to make sure it is available to my brother for as long as he needs it. I don't know exactly what all that will mean, but the old homestead still has some memories left to build. And I'm willing to do my part to make sure that they are good ones.