Mo-o-o-m! I'm ho-o-ome!
Remember coming home from school sick. Maybe coming home early b/c you were really, really sad and couldn't keep it together in front of everyone......
I remember. I'd come through the door and things were quiet and still. The lights were all off except the one that was being used. The house was picked up and tidied and smelled clean.....and if it wasn't, there was some very good reason.
Sometimes I sneeked in quietly, took off my shoes and climbed into bed, trying to avoid my mom's prying questions.....of course, her ears (as all mother's ears are) were supersonic. She heard my patter up to the front door before I opened it. She probably heard me talking to my teachers or boss 5 miles away and knew to expect me in 30 minutes. But whenever she knew I was on my way home is not too important, the fact is that she always knew.
And she was there. Waiting. Avaliable. My best friend....my confidante....my mom.
Today was a bad day. I woke up late.....my body is hurting a lot today. I hate saying that b/c I feel so pathetic. I feel old, it reminds me that death is crouching at my door.....at all of our doors.
The invincibility of my youth, the days of jumping off of roofs, skateboarding on halfpipes, drinking my older brother's friends under the table, driving recklessly down the highways beligerent and intoxicated, going home with strangers......those days I believed with all my heart nothing too bad would ever happen to me......
I guess it was true. I'm still alive, I haven't killed anyone, I haven't been forcefully raped. But the deception of eternal youth, the arrogance of invincibility, the pride of my strength, beauty, intelligence and daring - those things are waning, dieing, fading, evaporating like a mist......as they very well should.
With age comes wisdom, so they say. Well, I say wisdom comes from pain and the longer we live the more pain we feel...the more we learn....the things that sting, we learn to avoid and that shapes our decisions as we move through each day.
Well, today I am in pain. My back bears dull throbs, sharp aches, I just don't have full range of movement like before. My right knee, after the accident it's just not the same either....I love my knee. I want my knee to be happy and light, strong and capable! But no, it is morose....depressed. My leg is too heavy for her to bear, to lift, to turn, to drag along behind her. My knee wants out. She wants to lay us up in bed and mourn away for the younger days.
That is my weakness: consistent, annoying, relentless, dull pain. It makes life harder for me.
When I left work today I had started to cry....but I couldn't stop. The words, "Please tell Peter I'm gone" stumbled off my lips in between ridiculous gasps and sobs. Pathetic. Weak, humbling....and there was death again....crouching.
Yes, yes, I know the truth: "When I am weak, then I am strong." The Lord has lots to work with today b/c I am not dead yet, just very frail.
Frail. I would come home to the clean house frail, I could usually hear the hum of the dishwasher running, the only light was in the back bedroom where my mom would sit, tackling household bills, authoring grocery lists and making business calls.
And she would recieve me in all my frailty....with hugs maybe, or words, sometimes food, advice. She'd always chalk it up to vitamins. "Have you taken your vitamins?", "Go take your vitamins, I've already separated them for you."
I haven't taken a vitamin in 3 months....death is at my door.....he's in the cupboards holding the pill box, whispering me away from the dark cabinet that is filled with pills. There is a lazy susan just for Calcium, Iron, Ginko Biloba, Grape Seed extract, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, Calcium with Rosehips, and the list could go on......
That is my mother's cupboard. Her calendar is posted on the inside. She was so organized...her days off and days on are filled out until June! She's been gone for 3 months and I haven't had to buy a single roll of toilet paper, a napkin, not a paper plate, not hardly a lightbulb. Certainly I won't run out of vitamins anytime soon....
On her calendar are the important dates, my brother's b-day and mine, her grandbabies....
Since she' s been gone I haven't brushed the cat either. No vitamins....lotta cat hair...everyday the house gets to be a little bit more mine. But today it was hers completely.
I came home from work early. Too sad, too hurt, too achy, the intranet was down, Microsoft was not responding, why, why, why be here today when I feel like any moment I'll violently throw the mouse into the computer screen in hopes that the screen will dramatically burst with flames and crashing glass as though I plunged a baseball bat into it's heart. No, no, my cubicle buddy would look over and raise his eyebrow at me...I would feel... deflated, irrational, foolish.
So I came home from work. It's been raining so much, the plants will have a truly green spring. April showers do bring May flowers, so that is what I look forward too.
I gazed out the window on my way through our neighborhood, pleased to see the green buds wrestling through the cold. There's been a break in the showers today and the clouds are mixed; gray flats with puffy whites. The wet asphalt glistened, black and shiny 'neath shifting rays of sunshine.
I was excited to see how our own trees are doing. My mom planted them all.....our lot was a dry, cracked, anthill when we came here. I designed the garden (I was always the desinger) she did all of the work (she was always the gardner). Those troublesome trees I tell you. She fought with them a great deal. She planned and studied and finally decided on the ones we would plant. I, of course, cannot remember their names and she, of course, knew not only the common names but their Latin ones as well.
As I turned into the drive, I scanned our trees. The big one out front, it looked like others I had seen just before but..... no leaves, no buds, no green. Hmm, well, there are the flowery ones that look like they're begining to bloom in town, and I pulled up the driveway....nope, not those either. Not even a bud, wait that's a lie, there were about 4-5 tiny, dark brown buds on those. And the birch in the back.... empty, linear, cold. 
I walked through the door, into my mother's dark, quiet house. And there, hanging above the stove, almost too much for me to bear, were the potholders. They are her potholders, she chose them and brought them home. I never imagined that those very potholders would make me cry, sob, in fact, and that they would drive me into the recesses of my empty house, to mourn.
And so my body aches, the cat sits on my lap, shedding profusely on my wool coat and slacks and death crouches outside my door.
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