With degrees in Physics and Chemistry, Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. His novel, short stories, and poems are works still defining his style. He lives in 1974, has been married for 26 years, and collects occupations (the current tally is 95).
Her House Our Home
I received the phone call. Her voice was weaker than I remember. She wanted to talk for a spell and poke through my life to see how I was getting along. She is my mother and she is nosy, manipulative, and rather selfish. I am her daughter and have tolerated her attributes my entire life. This call was an invitation to come home for the weekend. A simple math calculation verified she would turn 70 this year. She would also celebrate this birthday alone. Maybe it was out of pity, but I agreed. However, I had to return no later than 7pm on Sunday. Slowly, she agreed to my terms. Smiling, I had a small victory today.
When I arrived to her house and let myself in (she always made sure I knew it was her house), I found it a disaster. The entire house required cleaning, the laundry needed attending, and there was this smell of geriatrics permeating every room.
I walked upstairs and found my mother atop soiled sheets with the disheveled look of someone who gave up. Her eyes found me but her smile could not hide her current state. This was not my mother. This was not the woman who demanded an immaculate appearance in both self and state. This woman had one foot in the grave.
Then it hit me, her call to me was a cry for help. For years, she gave all to me and received only a nosy, manipulative, and selfish daughter in return. I turned my back on her house, her manners, and her. I am beginning the autumn of my life. My mother lives in the winter of hers. I held her hands and she understands that I understand. She has nothing left to give. At least she knew to call someone who did.
For the next two months (yes, I quit my job) I scrubbed her house back to its glory days. I forced my mother to exit that 4-poster tomb she calls her bed and rejoin the land of the living.
I opened windows, planted flowers, and took her for walks. She unearthed her recipe book and I began mastering the delicacies she cooked and baked for my (previously) unappreciative palate.
782 Sycamore Street evolved from an impending morgue to the regal elegance it once commanded from all who passed by. I elevated my mother back the Queen status she lorded over others. I could not live knowing my mother existed with any other title.
I planned a return trip when my mother asked me to sit at her kitchen table. She reached for a house key and gave it to me. Her next words, soft humble words, roared among the empty rooms of her house. I will never forget them.
“Take the key. Keep the key. I want you to live here. Permanently. Not in my house, but in our home.”
My mother grows older each day. That day, I just grew up.