Another Day in the Country
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
I live in my mother's house. It is a house that I designed for her, helped build for her, and which she inhabited for a few short years. I always thought she'd live to be 100 — like her sister Anna — but instead she went to sleep shortly after her 90th birthday and didn't awaken.
So, now I live in my mother's house. At first it was filled with her things — at least in the areas that she inhabited. Her dishes in the cupboards. Her pans on the shelves. Her arrangement of knives and forks and spoons. Her junk drawer by the sink. Her choice of detergent. Her dish towels — large and white. Her oil under the sink. Her microwave rarely used. Her lovely new oven buzzing, "Don't you hear that sound?" she'd said to my sister. She didn't. "It's like ringing in my ears."
When I moved into mother's house I walked through the rooms. "Don't you hear that sound in the kitchen?" I said to my sister. "It's omnipresent, I hate it." So, I called the repairman and he said, "Lightning must have damaged the oven controls — we'll have to replace the computer panel."
My mother used to long for an oven with just knobs. No matter how many instructions my sister wrote or how many dots of color and sticky-taped explanations she hung on the oven door, mother still longed for a dial to turn, a knob to twist to the appropriate temperature. She wanted to see coils light up, immediate response, a pre-heat feature. She didn't understand the theory of convection — she just wanted her bread to rise and bake to golden perfection.
"I don't think the furnace in this house is working right," my mother said once winter came. "It's noisy, especially at night," my mother said, "but I'm not meaning to complain, it's a lovely house."
The first night that I slept in this house after mother died, I lay in the dark in her bedroom and listened to the furnace. That blankety-blank thing WAS noisy. And there were spots in the house which didn't get enough heat, that's why Mom's house was always overheated. Opening the front door was like walking into the tropics.
Once again I called the nearby heating repair company. They walked through my attic and pointed out the reasons for this new house not heating efficiently, making noise. "I'll bite the bullet and you fix it," I said.
"Well, Mom," I said into the ether, "You were right. I'm sorry I didn't do this sooner."
When I came to this house in January I said, "I'm not sure I'll stay. I'll know eventually, maybe by November." November seemed so far away.
And here we are in November. I've decided to stay. Little by little mother's things are disbursed. Little by little the space is transformed. My paintings are on the wall. My chairs from California are in the living room. My new bed is in her bedroom; but her dresser still sits against the wall. My heavy towels are in the bathroom, bright yellow and brown. Her bargain towels, in shades of pink and blue — whatever was on sale, were given away.
I still call this place Mother's house — eventually, on another day in the country, it will be mine.
