Another Day

Another Day
I live in a small, four bedroom home, that was once was filled with radios playing, alarm clocks ticking, children running, laughing and playing, but now is quiet.
Once the neighborhood was filled with noisy children; now it is too quiet. On occasion one may hear a child’s laugh, but only when they come to see the Grandma and Grandpa’s.

Yet, I find myself ready for silence mixed with an occasional laugh. I gave birth to three children and raised six. Now, I was ready to move forward into the next chapter of my life.

Thanksgiving 2001, my job ended abruptly. Concurrently, my husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I found myself three weeks from Christmas, so a new job was not quickly promising. Laid off, I left work with mixed emotions. I was scared, sick to my stomach and yet, I knew that I had to be cheery.
In a short half-hour, I was scheduled to meet my husband and daughter at the MD Anderson Cancer Hospital to meet the first, of what would become, a myriad of doctors.

How was I going to walk into that hospital with a ‘happy face’, knowing that I might not even have insurance for his necessary treatment? Then I remembered “Footprints” a poem about God walking us through life. “God”, I prayed, “I need you to carry me”.

I spent the following days and weeks nursing my husband and driving him to and from his doctor visits. I measured his day’s worth of pills, cooked special meals and spent hours just sitting and talking with him.

Nights were hard for me. I worried about money, health insurance, my husband dying and what would happen to me after he was gone. After a week of that, I decided to take my mind to diversions. I chose to re-introduce myself to my own house. I would tuck my weary husband into bed around nine o’clock and begin. I went patiently through the house, seeing it afresh - cleaning, painting and reorganizing. I discovered the true function of my label maker and the meaning of “dust buster”. In each room, I thoughtfully dusted each item, decided what needed to be kept or tossed and discovered a whole new house.

The back bedroom became the office that I needed so desperately. My desktop computer now sat on a handcrafted tabletop, with drawers under it to hold office supplies. I covered one wall in the room with corkboard to place the most used phone numbers, the most loved pictures and my favorite poems. With each item, a reminder of the past swept over me.

Years ago, the walls had been painted white with a navy blue trim. The blinds were black. That was the year my youngest son moved into this room. His décor choice was to paint the whole room black. We compromised by hanging black blinds and painting the trim in navy blue.

The closet was filled with my oldest son’s baseball cards, a bag full of baseball bats, two baseball gloves, school year books, clothes “he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep” and on the top shelf, a violin that belonged to my youngest son.

I laid each item on the bed as I removed it from the closet. As I took the violin from the shelf, I moved the books and bats and sat on the edge of the bed. I held the dusty violin case and gently opened the lid to remove the violin. I closed my eyes and for just a few minutes.. I could see and hear him playing a simple piece from Mozart.

As I sat and swayed on the bed to the sound of his music, I could feel the tears running down my face.

Why do children leave such memories embedded in our brains and hearts? Why are the ‘everyday things’ of our children left for us to dispose of? Don’t they realize that these are the things that etched our lives? Don’t they understand that these things still hold their “being” I could even smell the wax he used to clean the violin; even the violin case smelled of his once favorite cologne.

I boxed up the baseball cards for my oldest son to give to his children, the bats I gave to the little boys at the church, and the violin I donated to a young girl that could not afford to buy one.

Now I had a room in which I could write letters, pay bills (without getting jelly on them before mailing), and start my own business. The room was mine!

The middle bedroom housed all my sons at one time or another and the memories were overwhelming. The walls displayed my youngest son’s handprints, done in gray paint with splatters of a blue woven accent. That year, he was feeling very artistic. I remember carefully painting the ceiling and trim, carefully avoiding the precious handprints. The prints seem so small now…

Filled with nostalgia, I filled the remaining wall without handprints with paintings and photography work, items that I had picked up over the years.
My clock collection was hung over the closet door with the blinds and light fixture accenting the gray in the handprints. The closet in this room was filled with the children’s favorite books. I sat on the floor and gently looked at each one. Nancy Drew, The Bernstein Bears, Little Golden Books and the Cat In The Hat seem to come to life right before my eyes. These I could not part with.

I made this room into my grandchildren’s room. I filled it with arts and crafts, a small record player, boxes of pictures of their parents as children and last, but not least, the books.

Somewhere around age 13 my daughter began plotting her departure from the third bedroom. Eighteen just couldn’t get there soon enough for her. I had not entered it in years. This room remained just as she left it for nearly eight years. Growing up, I had not allowed the boys to move into it.
The walls were white, the trim purple. Delicately laced purple curtains hung from the windows. Now, the posters of her canopy bed stood tall, waiting for the return of the once laced canopy.

I could still see her lying on the bed, talking on the telephone with curlers in her hair and wearing her “cool” jeans. The dresser was now empty, but the closet still held her most precious items: ballet shoes, clarinet, evening gowns, the graduation gown and on the top shelf, a box of pictures, Girl Scout badges and old corsages.

I sat down at her desk and took the most wonderful walk through the past. There was the picture of her oldest brother when she had painted his fingernails, her first ballet recital and her first coed party. Pictures of birthday parties, Girl Scout activities, band camp, Easter Sunday and helping her youngest brother hunt Easter eggs and on the bottom, I found a picture of she and her dad going to the Father Daughter Banquet. By the way she moved out when she was twenty.
I donated the clarinet, took the evening dresses to the thrift shop, put the graduation gown and the box of memorable items in the dresser (minus the ballet shoes and the picture with her dad.) I loaded up the bedroom treasures and drove them over to my granddaughter. She was just as excited as her mother was!. The ballet shoes and picture, I framed.

A new bed, curtains, dresser, decorative hangers for the closet, plush towels and a basket with toiletry items turned this bedroom into a great guest room.

I framed as many pictures as possible and papered the hall walls with them. That little chore had me crying for two weeks. Now, all of those memories echo through the hall.

I sold the six-foot dining table and bought an antique Butler’s table for the kitchen. The first child to return home for a visit was one of the boys. He stared at the small kitchen table and asked if I had washed the dining table in hot water. Now, six feet of table wasn’t needed for just the two of us and the Butler’s table was much more intimate. I wanted, and needed, that intimacy for my husband and I, even if it was just at the table.
My husband regained some of his strength and we worked on the living room together. We hung shelves and organized my books on them by author, creating a library look. We moved the television into our bedroom because my husband was spending a lot more time in bed, unable to sleep. I shampooed the carpet, hung marshmallow-white wooden blinds and gave the walls a fresh coat of white paint.

We made it through Christmas that year with the help of our youngest son. He bought the Christmas tree, helped decorate it, hung lights on the house and provided the Christmas Dinner.

I haven’t finished the hall closets or the bathrooms yet, but I figure there are a lot of sleepless nights ahead for mental and physical diversions.