Building

Trying to sell our condo and buy a house has been a long, painful process, full of high highs and low lows. A lot of it is waiting. Now we're waiting to hear back from a potential buyer who is teasing us with his interest in our place.

Part of me doesn't want to leave, not only because of memories but also because of conveniences. I'm close to work. Fletcher loves his home. When the weather behaves, we can step out our door and walk down to a fun jungle gym, a set of basketball hoops, and even a pool. We can walk to the grocery store, the gas station, the dollar store, the park, and a few fast food restaurants. We have a lovely view of a pond, which is what attracted me here to begin with.

But something about a condo says "impermanence." It's a step up from renting, but it's not where I want to be...

This condo isn't the place where I want to lay in the grass with my children and look at the clouds.

It isn't the right place for us to wake up every Christmas morning.

It isn't where my kids will bring groups of friends over to hang out.

It isn't where my son will sleep the night before his wedding day.

It isn't where my children and grandchildren will come to feast every Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday.

This isn't the place where we want to make the greatest memories, the memories that will make Fletcher and his little brother or sister nostalgic when they think of us someday.

I want a home with enough space for homemade living room tents and pajama parties, enough space for teenage movie nights and sleepovers. I want a backyard that's only ours for playing football, so I can watch as Andy slowly begins to lose speed against his ever-growing son. I want a kitchen where we can together make the birthday cakes and Christmas cookies and Thanksgiving turkeys. I want my home to be a part of why my family's memories will be big, warm, cozy, funny, heartbreaking and complete. I want my home to be loved as a cornerstone of our family rather than a resting place.

From the beginning we knew our condo wasn't where we would spend the rest of our lives. And maybe the next won't be either, because no one seems to stay in one place anymore. But I'd like it to be. I'd like my children to search the attic one day when I'm gone and find the memories that we're just starting to make now. I want to paint the kitchen the color it will always be and buy the flower-print plates that we'll still be using in fifty years.

I want to start building the rest of my life.

first birthday

It smelled like summer that day, like sweat and sunshine. It had been hot that week, but May 23, 2010 was scorching. It was a wet heat that soaked through the skin.

For a woman in labor, it was hell on earth.

Labor pain gives places new meaning. The bathroom at Andy's cousin Adam's house, where I sat on the edge of the cold bathtub while panting, completely bewildered by what was happening... the couch where I sat with Andy and his cousin Alison while I explained away my red, pained face as an effect of the heat... that exact place on my bedroom floor where I, in shocking pain on my hands and knees, wondered at the contrast of the cat's serene face...

These places were incidental before. Deep pain leaves deep memories and creates the greatest kind of significance. Pilgrim Road, a little road I take all the time, will always be the longest road I was ever on. The hospital room, as antiseptic as any, will always be my favorite room in this entire world.

Five hours of pain. Then one hour of horror.

And then magic.

It may be the trauma, or the newness of the experience, or the knowledge that your life is changing, or the body chemicals that create this significance that eclipses all other life experiences. I believe it to be magic. And I believe this love defines me.

Dear Fletcher,

Many years from now, you'll be a grown man with his own ideas who rolls his eyes at the way his mother gets emotional every time she gets the chance to hug you and tell you how you mean the world to her.

You were amazing the day you were born. You are amazing today. You're going to be an amazing man.

I wanted a baby for a long time before you finally arrived, and even I was blown away by the miracle you are.

I understood beauty the first time I saw you.

That first night of your life, you got to stretch your muscles for the first time, hold your head up, open your eyes and see what you could of this new world. In one year, you learned to crawl and walk and eat and play and deliver those coveted hugs and kisses. You learned what you want, and what you don't want. At your first birthday party, you sat on the grass in the sunshine and studied the world with your curious eyes.

There's a lot of world out there. You make it beautiful.

Many changes are ahead, and you'll continue to grow and learn. I'm going to make mistakes. Maybe you won't grow up eating all the healthiest foods and doing long division in preschool, but no one will be loved more.

You'll be a man someday. But you're my little boy today. And you'll have your mother's heart forever.


Love,
Mama

one year ago

Exactly one year ago, I was a different person. I was hugely pregnant, uncomfortable, and impatient. I didn't know that the greatest day of my life was only two days away. In fact, I expected I'd be pregnant for the rest of my life another couple of weeks.

I remember the suspense, both the fear of and eagerness for the unknown. When I wrote my last post before meeting my son, I had only two days to go before experiencing the fast, furious, screaming, blinding, shot-out-of-a-cannon, horrible, delirious, absolutely awing handful of hours it would take to be introduced to him.

I couldn't know what was coming. It isn't something that anyone could explain.

I struggle to remember life before. Though I wouldn't have described it this way, I remember the cats being placeholders in a void I wasn't completely aware I had. (Now, the cats are more like toys that happen to think and move for themselves.)

Like trying to remember a dream, I have a sense of the unending stretches of time over which I was sole dictator. I remember snippets of the sensation of pregnancy.

I dreaded having to wait for Fletcher, before I even knew how amazing he would be. What would he look like? How would his voice sound? Would he be healthy? Would I know what to do?

One year ago today, I didn't know my son. I didn't know how to be a mother. I didn't know what my life was about to become.

Joy.

grandma and grandpa's house

Houses are powered by memories. As my husband scrolls through home-for-sale listings, I wonder what memories my son will have, what details will matter to him, and how I can make for him a home that comforts. A home for love.

It's close to a decade since my grandparents were forced by failing health to move to a retirement facility. I lost my grandfather, I may be losing my grandmother, and I find that I miss their old house, more even than I miss the house I grew up in.

It was a warm house with a small kitchen, dish rags hanging from wall-mounted rails, the cookie jar of windmill cookies, a vinyl tablecloth with scotch tape over any cuts, pine cupboards storing well-worn white Tupperware that Grandma had washed by hand thousands of times. It smelled of roasted meat and dish soap.

Grandpa would sit at the table, a small TV playing the news or Matlock or The Bold and The Beautiful. He'd wear thin, white undershirts, gray chest hair showing over the collar, and play solitaire with faded cards. I'd sit on a chair, on my feet, and hope that Grandma was making macaroni and cheese instead of gross vegetables.

I can barely stand how much I miss it. The people, their voices. The room and its smells.

Grandma would read with me, watch Mr. Rodgers, sing "You Are My Sunshine," push me on the swing set outside, play gin and king's corners and old maid. I'd trail after her to the basement to watch her move undershirts and old handkerchiefs from the washer to the dryer, and peek through the small basement windows where I could just see Grandpa planting red geraniums along the house.

I have an anti-photographic memory. I can't really bring faces to mind, not even my husband's when he's sitting next to me. But I can see my grandparents' house, the red berries that fell from the tree over their sidewalk, the jewelry box on my grandmother's dresser, the linen curtains, the gold flowered wallpaper on the bathroom walls. I remember the starchy, powdery detergent smell from Grandma's closet, the sound of the spare refrigerator humming to life, the mirror shelf on the living room wall where stood an artificial rosebud in a slender vase.

Little changed in their house, I could count on that. But now I'll never be there, with them, ever again.

I grieve for the loss of it. There is nothing that can last forever. Places, things, people, even memories. All of it is impermanent, all but love.