My Mother’s House

My mother died five years ago last Saturday..and my father, almost two years before that. What’s that saying…you can’t go home again? For me, that’s true now. I ran across these pictures the other day…I’ve labeled them “my mother’s house”. If you knew my parents, you would know that my mother never liked this house very much, built later in their lives, just the way my dad wanted it, too big for grandparents with no grandchildren near by perhaps. The birch tree, the gazebo, the special stone on the front of the house, these all speak of things my dad loved and enjoyed bringing into being. So why do I think of it as my mother’s house? Maybe it’s because she wound up living there last, or maybe it has to do with what most women know…a man may work and pay for the house, but it’s the woman who usually controls the inside. It’s a miracle marriages ever work. How do two different people raised in two different families ever come to an agreement on how to make a house their home? My husband and I could have lived with each other…it’s was the house that killed us. I thought it was his unwillingness to part with a single thing that was totally unacceptable. Looking back now though, my protestation mess was just as bad. Somehow, my mother and father compromised on their houses. Maybe it was because in their day, they were just glad to have someplace to live at all.