My mother said something curious, thought provoking and peculiar, today.
    I'll cover the context later when I'm not so tired but I want to record what she said as exactly as I remember it before losing more of it in sleep than I've already lost in wakefulness and exhaustion.
    This is, unfortunately, a paraphrase, but very close to the original:
    "All these moves I've made and none of them has been an upgrade."
    We were speaking, specifically, of houses. We were arguing about houses, heatedly discussing whether we could still afford two houses (me speaking financially, although she accused me of speaking emotionally; her speaking emotionally, although she denied this). It was then that she dropped this bomb on me, a bomb with a variety of explosive effects: A bomb with several separately timed release segments.
    I have known since, it seems, forever that my mother has a dream home. She has had bits and pieces of it in some of the houses she's inhabited. We had, on Guam in one of our homes, "Quarters A-2" (so named because it had once, just after WWII, been the commanding officer's quarters) an almost industrial sized kitchen, for instance, with loads of cupboard, pantry and counter space and a large attached utility room. She loved these areas. Most of our family's life went on in the kitchen. My mom's and dad's farm in Wichita Falls, Texas, also had such a kitchen with a somewhat more recessed dining room and loads of other rooms which my mother loved but with which she and my father did nothing. It was also a "farm house" which my mother loved. Her dream home is part farm house in that it is on a farm but is more a type of split level ranch style mansion/home featured in the late, great, evening soap "Dallas", a program which she loved chiefly because of the Ewing's home.
    I have memories of my father and her collaborating on detailed floor plans of her (yes, "her"; I think my father adopted his because she had one) dream home.
    Certain aspects of her dream home have changed over the years. She now dreams of homes much like the classic "Victorian style" (not to be confused with Victorian) historical homes surrounding a one mile or so circumference of Prescott's Courtyard Square.
   I know she's never had her dream home.
    The point of me mentioning this, though, is that, until today I never knew how badly she has wanted this home of hers and how far she feels she is and, apparently, has always been from it.
    Knowing this has already had more than a few repercussions on my wondering about her, our companionship, and our lives together (which will remain together until she dies if I don't precede her in disability and death).
- posted by gail rae @ 00:00   email...this post