Goodnight Nobody

I’m really getting tired of indecisiveness.  Is it too much to ask that people make a decision and stick with it now days?  My son is three, so every day I have at least ten conversations with him that usually go something like this:

“Mama, I want something to drink.”

“What do you want baby?”

“I want some apple juice.”

“Okay.”

“No, I want orange juice.”

“Okay.”

“No, I want milk mama.”

“Well, which do you want?  Orange juice or milk?”

“No, I want apple juice.”

This flippancy is enough to drive even the sanest of mothers insane.  Since I can’t very well blame society (yet) on my son’s daily battle with indecisiveness, I have to go ahead and blame human nature.   When presented with a myriad of drink options, my son is like a contestant on “Let’s Make a Deal.”  If he chooses incorrectly, he’ll end up with some bogus prize like a pair of porcelain dogs.  If he chooses wisely, he gets the whole showcase including the trip to Paris and the car.  Ok, so he’s choosing between milk and orange juice, but still.  We humans are so afraid to make a choice and stand by our decision because we think about the “what ifs” or the “what could’ve beens.”  Oh, if only I’d have chosen the milk, I’d be so fulfilled right now. 

Life is so hard for a three year old.

Every time this happens I want to say to him, you know buddy, the milk is still in the fridge, cold and ready anytime you want it, ding-dong.

It is this same indecisiveness that prolonged the selling of my mom’s house in Maplewood and made three people back out of three contracts on the house.  I want it.  I don’t want it.  We’ll close in two weeks.  No, I don’t want to anymore.  I felt like every time we were getting ready to close on the house that I was dealing with yet another three year old who couldn’t decide if he wanted milk or orange juice.  A short sale on an as-is, fixer upper of a house which should’ve closed in a month took six months to finally come to an end, and all because of a stinker neighbor and three very indecisive, big fat babies.  The fourth contract was the charm.  Eight thousand dollars and five months later, an adult came along and finally decided that yes, I’ll sign the contract and see it through.  I could’ve French-kissed the guy. 

And so today I said a long overdue goodbye to my childhood home.

Technically, I didn’t say “goodbye” to the house. I more or less took a look around and said thank you God that I am done with this.  Hopefully the gracious and dedicated buyer who finally bought it will fix it up and another family will move in and have good times, or at least more good times than bad.  My mother, on the other hand, actually said goodbye to it.  She needed to.  She told me, “Well, this morning I let it go.”  Which, for her sake and for ours, needed to be done.  We couldn’t have kept this thing going much longer.

For me, every milestone in my son’s life has been an emotional bowl of mixed nuts.  Sad, relieved, happy, embarrassed…I can’t feel an emotion without another conflicting one bubbling up every time something big happens in his life.  I guess it’s the same way for my own milestones. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my chest only to leave a small vacant hole, maybe for the rest of my life.  It’s probably different for my siblings because apparently, before I was born, my parents moved around a lot.  But since I can remember, excluding my current residence, it’s the only house I’ve ever lived in.  I don’t really know how I expected to feel.  I certainly felt like I was ready to say goodbye to the place back in February, when we were scheduled to close with the first buyer.  In fact, I was ready to kiss the place goodbye.  I was tired of it, sad about it, and could only think of the bad things that had recently happened there.  It was a burden.  It wasn’t home.  It was something else, something sad.  The rooms inside that used to hold our holiday sing-alongs and the walls that could barely contain our laughter were cracked and chipped and stained with cigarette smoke.  The floors that we used to sleep on when we had slumber parties with thirty of the neighborhood kids had sunken in, held up by unstable two-by-fours.  My parents' room, which used to be my safe haven in thunderstorms and where I'd sneak into when I had bad dreams was where I watched my dad take his last breath and then leave us forever.  Every time I walked through the hallway there was the pictorial from my sister’s funeral staring me in the face.  One of my cousins called it “the house of death.”  It wasn’t the same house that I grew up in.  It was a liability, more than any of us could manage. Any money that came from selling it was, disappointingly, just barely enough to get my poor mother out of debt.  In many ways, yes, I was so ready to say goodbye to it.  And in other ways, no, I don’t know if it’s even possible to say goodbye to something like that.

Saying goodbye to something is probably easier than saying goodbye to someone, I suppose.  A house is just a place to make memories, but then, it becomes a part of you just like your own last name, a part of your identity.  I haven’t been “Carrie George from Maplewood” since I’ve been married, but, I always felt connected to it.  Growing up I couldn’t wait to get out of it and now, I kind of miss it.  I guess it’s time once again for me to grow up, to let go of some things and hold onto others.  Let go of the sadness and the memories of death and hold onto happiness and the memories of life…sleeping in front of the fire place on Christmas Eve and watching my parents sneak into the living room with presents; running up the front steps after playing all day and smelling fried pork chops and mashed potatoes; dancing and singing with my siblings when my parents were gone; spying on my sister’s goodnight kisses from the living room window and then finally being old enough to have my own goodnight kisses on the front porch; walking in from a date late at night and finding my mom praying and/or listening to Johnny Cash records; watching my grandma sing “Grandma’s little blue eyed boy” to my son; watching my dad’s eyes light up at the sight of my nephew, his first grandson; holding hands around the dinner table to pray; life. 

These memories keep me balanced, you see, the yin and the yang.  Or as an 80’s sitcom so aptly put it, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take ‘em both and there you have…” My life.  A bowl of mixed nuts.  I know I won’t be able to shield my son from all of the pain of the outside world, but I hope our home is a safe place and the pain he feels inside of it is bearable.  I hope that someday he’ll think of his childhood home and choose to remember all the good times that are still to come.  As for me, I think I’ll choose to remember the good too.  I guess today I didn’t say goodbye to my childhood home, I just said goodbye to the house I now saw as an adult. 

I think I’ll hang onto my childhood for a while.