My mother has sold her house. After several years of
thinking about it, she is finally moving to a smaller place where she won’t
have to worry about keeping a large lawn mowed and a long driveway plowed. Her
new place will still have plenty of room for entertaining and a spare bedroom
for guests. And best of all, she has a new screened-in porch for sitting year
round in comfort. Half indoors, half out. There she can curl up in a comfy
chair and watch the seasons come and go as she loses all track of time in a
good book. She will have the time to do this now, because she will have less
house and yard maintenance to eat up her free time on the weekend.
The house Mom is vacating was my home from age 16 to when I
left at 19. Three years is not a long time to gain a lifetime of memories, and
yet I am feeling a bit weird about the house leaving our family. This is where
we lived when I graduated high school, and moved out to be married. It’s where
I went when that first marriage ended, and where I returned to when I moved
back from living overseas. It has always been a place of calm. A safe retreat
from the harsh storms of life.
I feel a bit unhinged to realize I will never again sit
quietly in the living room where I shared my last long talk with my father
before he died. He was napping on the couch after a particularly gruesome round
of chemo, and when he awoke he told me about his dream – driving a big truck
through the desert. “It’s always Arizona in my dreams,” he explained. He also
dreamed of multi-coloured, patchwork-patterned race cars, gangs of dancers in
competition, and packs of friendly dogs. “Those must be good drugs you’re on,
Dad,” we joked. We realized later he was describing his kind of perfect Heaven.
His presence remained so strong in that house, even after Mom redecorated, and
his favourite chair disappeared.
Maybe this is why, on the day we helped Mom to pack up the
last of her things, I claimed Dad’s desk. He had that small, sturdy piece of
wood when he was in university and it moved with him to Kemptville when he
married Mom in 1965. He sat at it and wrote lesson plans as a young teacher in
their apartment above Anderson’s Ladies Wear on Prescott Street. After I was
born, the desk moved to the front room of their first house on George Street – with
a view of the huge King Crimson maple tree that my grandfather planted on the front
lawn.
In 1980 we had Norenberg Construction build us our dream
house on 4 acres on Johnston Road – a sprawling split-level house with a family
room, a fire place and a living room we weren’t allowed to sit in unless we had
company. The desk had its own room in that house – a den with a window facing
west so you could see who was coming up the drive.
When we moved to Beach Road, the desk went downstairs. Every
evening during the school year Dad marked papers at that desk after dinner.
Sometimes the papers were mine, or my sister’s. We listened as he mumbled and
grunted to himself, wondering what mistakes we had made in our work.
As soon as he walked in the door after work each day, Dad
sat at the desk and wrote in a ledger. He showed me how he wrote down what he
spent every day, and where he kept the receipts. After he died, we learned he
had given money to several of his students over the years to buy a first car,
or to sign up for hockey. He also helped me many times, when as a single mom I
couldn’t afford to repair my car or pay my utility bill. I wanted to pay him
back but he wouldn’t let me. “Don’t lend what you can’t afford to give,” he
always said. I guess he had to be careful with his money, to ensure there would
still be enough when the need arose.
I took the desk home with me today. I’m not sure where I
will put it, but the smooth, dark wood polished with my father’s hands will
have a place of honour for many years to come.
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