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November 14, 2006
Going home
Neo-Neocon has written a moving account of her mother's desire to spend the end of her days with the dwindling number of people she knew in her hometown.
It's a deeply-felt meditation on the passage of time, the lost world that now exists only in our parents' memories, and the struggle to define what -- and where -- is home, for mother and daughter.
My mother's going home. What can "home" mean, at the age of nearly nine-three?
Not the home where she grew up as the only child surrounded by four adults, the large Victorian by the harbor with the rose garden that her grandfather lovingly tended. They dressed every evening for dinner there; he wore spats on his shoes and a carnation in his buttonhole.
Not the home she lived in for forty years while she raised her children and had parties where thirty sharply-dressed couples danced in the basement, and where she was widowed still young enough to be vigorous and healthy.
Not the apartment where she lived for eight happy years with my stepfather, whom she'd met when she was eighty and he eighty-five. He'd taken one look at her at a Florida get-together and said, "That's for me," and they were together till shortly before he died a few weeks after 9/11.
Nor is it the home she's lived in for the last five years, an independent living facility for the elderly in this northern New England town where I reside. It's far away from the New York City borough where her family settled a hundred and sixty years ago, and where she'd lived her whole life prior to coming here. No, this place has never been--could never be--home to her, despite its familiarity and elegant comfort.
This town isn't even home to me, although I thought it might become one when I moved here six years ago during one of those "times of transition" (translated: upheaval and heartbreak) in life. I thought it would most likely be a resting place for some small time before I'd move on. But instead my stepfather died, my mother couldn't live alone, and there was no place that suited her needs close to home.
[...]
And I? It may be time for me to move on, as well. If she hadn't been here, tying me to this place, I might have moved years ago. Probably to a larger city, one with more action and more choices--or the illusion of more action and more choices. Soon I'll be writing more about this, and maybe have some sort of contest, with a list of desired characteristics: choose the perfect city for neo.
But that's another post for another time. Right now I'm thinking about my mother, hoping she finds what she's looking for in her new place--if she doesn't, I imagine I'll hear about it soon enough.
But in one way she's blessed: she knows where home is. How many of us can say that, any more?
In the comments, one of Neo's readers thinks he knows where she'd feel at home:
The stars at night,
are big and bright,
CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP
Deeeeep in the heart,
Of Texas!
I was paraphrasing. Here's what he had to say.
As a former Michiganian (a native of the liberal haven of Ann Arbor) in my fifties, let me make a recommendation about relocation. If you are unafraid of driving, come to Texas. It is a marvelous place for people unafraid to work.
You can have your choices of lifestyles, too -- from the business oriented (Dallas), blue-collar (the Upper Gulf Coast); rural (Piney Woods), hippy-dippy artiste (Austin), or Tex-Mex (San Antonio).
You can't beat the seafood on the Gulf Coast, and you will find it a hoot being more liberal than your neighbors, rather than the only conservative on your block.
And, btw -- despite what you hear in the Northeast, Texans are probably the most laid-back people in the world about lifestyles. As long as you don't shove it in their faces, they are live and let live.
Sounds good to me. I wouldn't mind leaving the Left Coast behind for the friendlier environs of the Lonestar State.
Don't forget to read the rest of her post.
Posted by Mike Lief at November 14, 2006 09:45 PM
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