By LouAnn and Helen Middlebrooke |
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There is a picture on the wall that shows a house and next to it is a
willow tree standing in the wind. Sometimes, I look at that house and wonder who used to live in it, then something clicks in my mind as I look. It was my mother’s house she lived in when she was a child. It is hard to imagine that she was a child, how she ran around in the grass that surrounded the house. I can imagine her now, running to her mom because she fell and wanted to be with her mom, so her mom can comfort her. Then I turn and see my mom looking at me. She is grown up. I smile and run to her and I hug her and she hugs me back. I love her and she loves me. There is a picture on the wall that shows a house. A white house, drawn with careful lines, yet highlighted with bold splashes of gold-green. The trees around the house blow madly in the wind. The sky itself is agitated--the dots of blue and purple swirl to make wild musical clefs that seem to vibrate. This was my house, the house that I grew up in. The “Madhouse on the Hill.” It was a plain house, with little thought given to fashion. Curtains covered, but never graced, the windows. The furniture was practical. Nothing matched. But the house was clean. And lived in. In this house, children laughed and a mother sang. Here children played and sometimes fought. Here voices sometimes raised in anger. And tempers were sometimes lost. It was my home. And it was ruled by a passionate mother, who gave and loved and rebuked without reserve. What was it about her, about that house, that created such fierce loyalty in the hearts of her children? There was never any question in our minds as to where we belonged. We could go out, yes. But no matter how far we went, that house, her presence there, called us home. Even now, though she’s been gone nearly 26 years, and I’ve not lived in that house for 25 of them, that house still beckons me. The wild picture takes me home. And then I look at my nomadic children. They are growing up all over the world. They have known many houses. Has my love been enough to turn each of those places into a home? Home is where the heart is. Where the Mom is. |