“Home is where one starts from.” – T.S. Eliot
I was about four years old when I
ran into the kitchen and said to my mother, “I don’t want to play in my
room. I hate it here. I am going to run away!” As I went for a tiny suitcase, Mom said, “You
can run away, just don’t leave the yard.”
That’s when I learned about home and that’s when I realized that my
parents were a lot smarter than I would ever give them credit for until now.
Our family home was sold this
week. My father built the house piece by
piece, section by section while Mom raised my two sisters, thirteen months
apart. I was the surprise eight years
later. In the 50’s and 60’s, our home
was as normal and at times not so normal as anyone else’s. I can remember my mother cooking and baking
each, and I do mean EACH and every day.
I will always remember the couch in the living room where she taught
each of us how to knit, crochet and of course there were always books and
magazines to read on the coffee table. My
mother would also sit in her rocking chair and quilt. Every stitch was carefully done. I learned patience and perseverance watching
her. To this day, I still cannot figure
out how she had the patience to finish every single project. I still have the quilt she made me before I
left for college. I was instructed to
wrap myself with it whenever I got lonely.
I did.
Before the closing, as we were
cleaning out the house, the kitchen table, still with the marks of homework
done each and every night. My
grandmother taught Mom how to make strudel so in the fall, if we were lucky,
Mom would be stretching out strudel dough, across that table, and a true
authentic Austrian strudel was born. My mom spreading the apples, butter, sugar
and cinnamon, carefully rolling up the strudel for the pan was a tradition and
a treat. The smells of those strudels
are forever ingrained in me, along with homemade bread. We never went hungry. The kitchen was Mom’s sphere of
influence. She taught us all to cook at
an early age and her legacy continues.
We’re all very competent cooks.
That table was where I was encouraged to write. It was where my sister painfully tried to
help me with Algebra.
My father would come home from
work, wash his hands, crack open a beer and take a Pall Mall cigarette out and
sit at the head of the table while Mom took a roast out, and proudly placed it
on that table. He would here our stories without judgment. That table...so many memories. All the problems of our family and the world
were hashed out at that table. Some of
them were solved. Some definitely were
not. We played cards and my father would
secretly hide cards on us, laughing with a huge, glorious grin on his
face. He wanted to see who was paying
attention.
Our home is where I learned to take
risks. My mother watched in horror as I
tried to lasso the horse belonging to the farmer that bordered the property by
standing on the rock wall tempting him with a carrot. I wanted to horseback ride like my sisters. Again, I was four. I learned how to be
afraid. Afraid of disappointing both my
parents, I did what was asked...most of the time. In our home, no one was perfect. No one ever would be.
Our home was where I learned to say
“Goodbye” when I watched my sisters leave for college and then marry. I eventually would said, Goodbye” too. Mom and Dad with their hard earned money sent
each of us to college. I hated those first weeks of college and came home and
told my father so. He sat on the couch with me and said, “This house, is always
open to you Claude. But I really think
you should give college more of a try.”
I finally left the yard. I would
come back but I finally left the yard.
The new owners of our family home
will change it. Reinvent it. They will make it their home. Before the closing, I drove over to the house
and dropped off the garage door opener.
I took one more look around the house.
The bedroom where Mom would read to me still gave me comfort. She read to me every night. When my grandmother came to live with us,
this was where she stayed. Where she
stayed until, she passed. My parents’
bedroom...where I would crawl into bed, afraid of the dark...where they
fought...where they planned. ..where Ma would sleep alone after Dad passed. Try as I might, I will never manage my home
as well as they did. They had the skills
that a country’s Great Depression and two world wars create.
Change is never easy. In fact it can be terribly painful and
then...then there is peace. Peace that we
have done the right things by our loved ones, our parents. My father would have been proud of what we’ve
done with the house and how we have taken care of Mom. Mom has said, “I did my job.” She did so and then some. My father did his job by his family too. We have the memories to prove it. Good, bad and ugly...they are our memories
and they are ours forever. How lucky we were and are.
