where she lived

If she were alive, my mother would be celebrating her 67th birthday today. It’s hard for me to believe she’s been gone for 13 years now…….the number of years betraying the feeling of loss and longing that I still experience when I think of her.

She was an only child, so with both her parents gone, and my parents long ago divorced, there is no one around to share with me the stories of her. I wish my memory was better, I wish I’d paid more attention when I had the opportunity to listen.

Though I grew up 1500 miles from here, my mom’s childhood home is only one town over from where I currently live. My father was in the Navy and stationed in Spain when I was born, and so it was to her childhood home she returned with her newborn, where we lived until my father came back to the states.

The other day I impulsively decided to visit the home where my mother grew as a child, and where I lived as a baby. I can’t recall how many years it had been since I last had even driven by this house, but I do remember the last time I was in it: mom and I helping my Grandmother move from here into a retirement home in 1981. (I only remember this date because Ronald Reagan had just been elected President….the three of us sat in front of the television in this house and watched as the election results were coming in, full of utter dismay.)

Why does returning to the places of our past so often feel uncomfortable and heartrending? I have wonderful memories of this house, I was very close to my grandmother and visits to her here were always joyful. But the moment I stepped out of the car and onto the lawn I felt so sad. At first I thought it was because the house was in such disrepair, and so unlike how it was kept by my grandmother. And then I thought it was just me missing them both. But I don’t think that is it entirely. Maybe, when we return to the places of our past, we do so thinking that we can retrieve a piece of it and momentarily have it back. Upon arriving though, we are reminded of the impossibility of this……..the past is gone. To search for it, to try to reclaim what is lost, is to step out of present time. And that, I believe, is where the discomfort comes from.

I returned to this house hoping that it would share with me just a tiny story of my mother that I might hold to my chest and then breathe her in once more. But this house is only a shell, she doesn’t live there now. I was looking in the wrong direction, forgetting that when I want to remember her best I need only to look inside me and there I‘ll find her always.

Happy Birthday, Mommy.

~Cynthia