Stories from the Steps

STUFF, A BENEDICTION: I rounded another bend this weekend, a trip that both hollowed out & enriched my soul as we prepared my mom’s house for market & we prepped for moving her into assisted living. I mowed a yard for probably the final time & paid attention to a 4 course brick planter laid by my dad’s hand in the ‘70s that I’ve seen but haven’t noticed in years. I sat on a patio & stared at a 50 foot cherry tree my mom won’t have to worry about falling through her kitchen any longer, I swept with a worn out broom that needed replacing but I didn’t have time to replace & now I’ll have time to replace but no need, I sat at alone at an old kitchen table that I’ve known forever & cried because it would be close to the last time & I cried when in a chest I found its bill of sale from 1966 next to an invoice for a brand new aqua 1964 Chevy Impala with a $59 option purchase of a push button radio & I cried when one of my own wanted the table & its 4 ancient chairs and I watched another of my own load encyclopedias that I used to plagiarize a U.S. geography project when I first thought writing was cool in the 5th grade & I smiled when I loaded Bibles loaded with paper clips for bookmarks & viewed photos of weddings & honeymoons & war in Korea & report cards of my mom’s war with college academics & yearbooks & church directories & looked through boxes of love letters dating to 1960 from my dad to my mom & found a program from 1962 for a high school football banquet from the small Alabama town where I was born & my parents were married that a fellow from Tuscaloosa known as Bear gave the keynote address & cleaned out a china cabinet & drawers & found documents from 1971 proving that year was as tough for my dad as 2013 was for me & finally understood why he understood so well my struggles & I hated spending Sunday moving furniture into my mom’s new room & I hated being tired & I hated my family being tired & for someone with a truck having to give up a Sunday afternoon & I was grateful my mom had a place to go & I wasn’t as grateful to God as I should have been for going through a house & its 47 years of stuff & I told Him I wished once he’d win a game before halftime instead of the 4th quarter & I was angry at Him too for the circumstances causing us to have to go through 47 years of stuff & I didn’t thank Him enough that in the eye of this hurricane I could buy 3 pizzas & sit for presumably the last of 47 years of family meals in the floor, in the calm of two granddaughters or thank Him for my finding my first two baseball gloves & having a dad to break those gloves in just so & a dad to have a catch with & to grasp why Ray Kinsella turned under his corn for another catch with his dad or thank Him for the manna to get through the day while I longed for a miracle to get me through the coming holidays or wish I wasn’t taking photos of 47 years of stuff to sell on social media or be thankful for friends & coworkers that have checked in on my mental health via text or a stop by my office the last 4 weeks or be glad that both mine & my sister’s tribe are pulling the rope in the same direction in dementia’s tug of war
& I hope I’ll sleep all night instead of waking up at 1:30 in worry for my mom or stacking bills or giving an effort worthy of my paycheck or being grateful to have a place to lay my head & for my mother now having a safe place to lay hers. I watched about 10 of her new neighbors go about their Sunday business as we set up her bed & I knew there were about 10 families that knew our new fight & I was grateful for old neighbors that offered their garbage cans for 47 years of discarded stuff & for old friends that did & still do stuff for my mom & with my mom & did with my dad for more than 50 years & they’ve seen each other through a lot of stuff. This afternoon, I drove by the home my mom & dad had in 1971 & I stared at their bedroom window & I stared at mine & I stared through the big picture window, where a china cabinet lived against a wall & down the step into the kitchen where a 1966 vintage table lived & probably felt the financial pressure that my bedroom didn’t feel of the money running out before the month but Santa arrived & birthdays arrived & 3 meals a day arrived & I pulled into the driveway where my dad put up a basketball goal & where he sat in a metal folding lawn chair & broke those gloves in just so & I apologized to God as I realized He’d won some games before halftime & then I drove to my mom’s & I pulled into her driveway greeted by a “For Sale” sign & when that sign reads sold, it’ll mean for the first time since 2008 I won’t have at least two yards to maintain & two gutters to keep clean & two weekly totes of the garbage can to the street & no more years of collected stuff, of collected memories & my excuse for my kitchen & living room being decorated in mid-century frat house will expire but until then, there is archeology of 47 years to sift through & things to notice & more hollowing & more enriching of the soul & things to say a quiet “Amen” for, like four courses of brick from 1978 & a table from 1966…