Journey with Gwen: 328 Steps

Copyright © 2011 Barbara A. Puffin

Cover Art by Jyll Blaugh

Edited by Michelle Briggs-Wedaman

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-3871-6 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-3869-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-3870-9 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011915540

Printed in the United States of America

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/30/2011

Contents

Changing Walls

Destructive Forces

Questionable Color

Introduction to Joy

Change Foisted

Opening

Beth

Protection

Ilsa’s Lessons

Who’d Want to Log on?

The Knowledge

Outings

Injury

A Different View

Planting Pearls

Standing in the Corner

Departure

An Old Wish Granted

A Good Yarn

Emergence

Emergency Why

Shy Shawl

Dad Congratulates

Sufficiently Stable

Speechless

Go Back Once

Coffee

Mother’s Helper

A Flare for Attention

Understanding a Nightmare

Laundering

The Table Turns

Choosing Sides

A Call from Dad

Floored

Vigil

Emergence of Manna

X-Factor

Holding

The Door

No Back Roll

Cure for Living

Golden Adventure

Caught

The Supreme Out-of-Body Experience

A Gift of Closure

The First Visit

The Beauty of Timing

Strength

Visit Two

A Different Insurance

The Musical Shawl

Gold Discovered

Endnotes

Lovingly dedicated to Mom, because I know she is Aware.

The events in my story are true. Some characters are composite and names have been changed.

Changing Walls

I had thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. The reality of her moving nearby meant an intrusion and I was glad there were five houses between hers and ours. Well, it was an emotional invasion, but it wasn’t without invitation. I’ll get to that in a moment. Suddenly, her moving from the East Coast to right down the street was making me feel like I was shrinking, physically, from almost 5’6 down to the 4’9 I was in the fourth grade. Yes, I felt nine years old in spite of the fact that I was supposed to be a mature twenty-six.

I had received the moving company’s phone call the night before confirming that the van with the stuff was going to arrive between ten and noon. I felt like it was a waste of time off. On the other hand, I really wanted to take more time off. Actually, I didn’t want to be working, period.

And there would be no easy fix if I missed the deadline. Mom was relying on me to receive her belongings without a hitch. Okay, yes, I was shrinking more, down to my 4’ 3" second grade size now. Still wasn’t sucking my fingers, though. Didn’t mean I didn’t want to.

Roaming around the empty house, my hard-soled-shoe footsteps were magnified by the hardwood floors. The echoes of a stage being set. As I waited, I paced, taking a tour of the house visiting the first floor rooms over and over. A review of the details in an insecure mental check wouldn’t stop. What if I had the date wrong? I thought a moment; did I really get that phone call yesterday? Or did I dream I got the phone call? Yes, no, wait, yes, I got the phone call. Okay. Maybe I got the phone call. Wait, no. Wait. Yes, yes, yes, I really got that phone call.

I went up the creaky steps to the second level. They were steep with risers slightly higher than standard—high enough to catch my toe on as I climbed if I didn’t watch it. The stairs reminded me of New England cottages, uncovered finished dark mahogany-colored wood on the tread. The landing two thirds up sent you to the left. I hadn’t been up here much for as often as I had been in the house. As I climbed the last few steps, I could peer over the half wall that overlooked the stairwell. There was an enticing call to climb on it and sit with my legs dangling on each side. I restrained my 3’ 6" high self. This would be Mom’s guest room. And while the flimsy, white, peace-and-love era paneling—pressed to resemble wood—was thoroughly out of tune with the main floor of the house, the wide finished slats of the hardwood floor meshed better and gave the room its character, complete with appropriate old-house noises as I walked across it. I opened the attic door, catty corner from the top of the stairs. Peering through the darkness into the unfinished space I made a mental note to tell Mom about the burned out light bulb. Minimal daylight from the one window in there. There was insulation on the walls in between exposed studs and along the edges of the space, where there was no flooring near the pitch of the roof. I pulled the door shut easily, it was late autumn and cold outside so that the door wasn’t affected by humidity. Why did I feel like I was sneaking around and being nosy?

For some reason, when I descended the stairs to the first floor, I was self-conscious, avoiding making an undue amount of noise, even though I was the only one in the house. At the base of the stairs, I turned right and walked through the kitchen, passing where the refrigerator would be, and to the basement door. The stairs to the cellar were directly under the ones to the second floor. I ducked as I went down the basement steps. Anyone taller than 5’ would have to do so. Was I an adult again? Very soon after moving in Mom would make a hand written sign on an 8½ X 11 piece of white paper in large Mom-font with a green magic marker. Low Head Clearance. Evidence of her sense of humor, but to the point.

Had I done enough? Was this house really good enough? I wanted her approval. Why was I doing this? Why was I bringing her here? It was way too late to back out now. No way to call Mom who was now on the road and say, Hey, forget it. I didn’t really mean it. Oh yeah, I had signed the papers for the purchase. Nope, can’t go back on this one.

A thousand miles east and a week earlier this woman who was about to invade my space, known to others as Gwen, walked through her house of more than thirty years hearing her footsteps echo on the hardwood floors. Her steps didn’t make as much noise as mine because her orthopedic shoes were rubber soled. The movers had just picked up everything she was sending west. The aura around her walk, though, had been more wistful than mine when I toured her new house.

I had moved away years before, the last of her children to leave. Within the time she had lived there the walls had seen four children grow. For the past five years she had lived alone. The house had been built onto since she, with Dad and their infant daughter—the first of us four—had moved in back in 1948. Dad had added the dining room onto the back, had the dormer built, finishing both with knotty pine paneling. He laid hardwood floors for the two upstairs bedrooms and the tiny den that would house his desk. They had debated at the time making it a bathroom for the, then, family of five. But, finally as a family of six, we learned to work, most of the time, with the rhythm necessary to make the one first floor bathroom work. It wasn’t perfect, but we did it. People have more than one bathroom?

Gwen alone, Gwen, the widow and my mother, walked around the dining room running her hand along the backs of the chairs. They surrounded the table consistently occupied by all six of her family until one by one we grew up and left. Mom’s hand paused on one chair. She stood there remembering the turmoil of reprimanding her own mother. Her mother, Elsa, had scrubbed the back of the chair with a scouring pad thinking to do something good and it removed some of the finish. The conflict stuck another catch in Gwen’s throat now. Elsa had lived with us for a brief year and a half until she passed away. The table and chairs were staying with the house. That painful memory would stay behind with the dining room set.

Popcorn-kissed laughter and skinned-knee tears that had filled the house were the memories she chose to pack and bring with her. She looked at the terra-cotta walls of the living room void of furniture, dabbed a tissue to her eyes which wouldn’t allow full tears, blew her nose once and pulled the yellow front door shut and latched it for the final time. She would be handing the keys over the day after tomorrow at the closing. This night and the next few she would stay with a friend. With finality, Gwen went down the front steps and walked to her car on the journey to the next set of chapters in her life.

The furniture van arrived at about ten-thirty on that grey morning in November. Phew, okay, yes, I got the date right, I said aloud as I watched the truck park in front of Mom’s house.

The contents were carted by the two coveralled men into Mom’s new house. Wow, I said when I saw Mom’s labels, she’s so organized. Okay, that one goes to the room to the left behind that arch, and that one goes up the stairs. And so it continued until everything appeared to be in the house.

Why hadn’t any of that rubbed off on me? I was so messy, so disorganized. I couldn’t keep a clean house. What would she say? How would she judge me? Was I a good enough grown-up?

The driver stood next to me with the manifest. The antique glass-front cupboard and the baby bed go to your house up the road, right? he confirmed, pointing to his list with the pencil in his hand, scrolling down the yellow lined copy.

The antique cupboard—yes, and the what? Mom and I had talked about the first; how’d that baby bed jump in there? I snapped up to my twenty-six year old height and smiled broadly. I knew he didn’t get the joke.

Yeah, the baby bed goes up to your place. You didn’t know about that? It wasn’t his fault. Just reading the instructions, ma’am.

Well, yeah, if that’s what she instructed. Kind of a surprise, though. My eyes gleamed with my amusement. The not-so-subtle hint was certainly not missed. I’d been married for three years and there was no baby on the way. He, my husband, Clark, wasn’t ready yet.

On the day she arrived my emotions were mixed. I was pleased she had made it safely. I loved my mother. Yet, I was nervous, as if I had to pass some sort of test. The rules hadn’t been established. How was it that my height kept changing?

The house we’d all grown up in now belonged to someone else; there was no going back home. I had broken the house. I had broken our home. Had I made her move? None of my siblings had asked her to move away from the house in which we all grew up. I had.

Her new house was around a curve in the street. Still, she was going to be close. I was behaving the way I thought a good daughter should. I would have to behave differently. I wasn’t going to be able to hide anymore.

On the afternoon when Mom arrived we were seated in Clark’s and my living room having coffee—Mom’s favorite beverage. The four foot square coffee table divided the seating of the couch and two chairs in front of the white stone fireplace. I paced back and forth, in and out of the room. I was making sure that Mom, sitting on one of the chairs, had what she needed. Clark sat on the couch. I spent time fretting over whether she was pleased. Mom was always polite. I couldn’t tell if it was just her politeness. Clark didn’t have a clue how to fret. Yeah, probably I shouldn’t have been drinking coffee. The coffee wasn’t helping me to be calm.

No smoking in the house was a rule and Mom was a smoker.

The smell of my mother was always coffee and cigarettes. I had no olfactory memory of any applied fragrance, although I remembered seeing her spray some on her neck and wrists sometimes. Mostly on Sundays before church.

Mom chatted about her trip, grateful that Susie-Q had gotten her here safely. Susie-Q was her car. As she sat in the red leather wing-backed chair and sipped her coffee, I looked at her from my vantage point of the sofa and felt her hurt. The sadness in her eyes was there in spite of her little quips of humor. Her hair was now completely white and short with a little curl in it. I had never known her with brown hair other than the old photographs that had been in the house. By the time World War II was over and she and Dad had started their family Mom was twenty-six and Dad was thirty-three. By the time Mom had me, she was thirty-four. My memories as a child only saw her with completely grey hair; she had seemed so much older than all the other moms of my friends. I had had the start of a white streak in my long, brown hair well established by the time we were seated in that living room. Mom had told me when I had shown her my white hairs appearing in my late teen years that I had inherited that trait from both her and Dad.

Why was I thinking that it was up to me to make her happy? But I thought I could. I thought this would make it all better and fix her loneliness.

It had been half an hour since her arrival, if that long, when our front door bell rang.

First cousins once removed or is that second? How did that work again? They had travelled from a town 25 miles away. Cousins I had met a couple of times as a girl and only remembered marginally hearing about. And they came in, happy to see Mom, happy that last remnants of family had moved closer. They sat and chatted. And stayed. It had been a long time since they had all seen each other face to face. Twelve years, at least, though while I didn’t remember it, they had been at my grandmother Elsa’s funeral and we had travelled for that from Massachusetts to Indiana.

And they stayed. Even after it had been stated in conversation that Mom had literally just arrived, they still stayed. I didn’t know who they were talking about—distant relatives that I may have met as an infant. I was disinterested. Clark smiled graciously, drinking his coffee, nodding in appropriate places. I continued pacing in and out of the room, although attempting to conceal my impatience. Impatience was something I had in abundance.

Mom appeared to nod off. Every once in a while she would open her eyes and react to comments made from the cousins and then a few minutes later her eyes would shut again. I was astounded that the cousins didn’t seem to take notice. How much more obvious could it be? She had driven almost a thousand miles by herself and had only just arrived. After two hours the cousins finally commented that Mom must be tired and that they had best be leaving.

Shutting the front door with a shove of my butt, I turned and waved politely as they drove off. I turned back to the living room through the wide arch from the foyer.

I thought they would never leave! she said from her chair. Well, Mom was perky now! I’d never known this side of her, I had never seen a deliberate, or rather, had never noticed a deliberate ruse on her part, although, thinking back, I’m sure they had been there. Wow, Mom sees you as an adult and she let you in on her joke!

With the cousins departed and the evening approaching, I asked Mom if she wanted to stay the night at our house; her first night in her new neighborhood.

No, I’m going to go on home, she heaved a sigh of exhaustion. I can smoke there.

Oh, yeah, that’s true, I was surprised at my lack of guilt. I was relieved she wasn’t staying overnight with us. In a moment of unusual tact for me, I didn’t tell her that.

I handed her the house keys and as she took them she asked, Did you make a set for you and Clark?

Yes, Mom, I did.

Good.

I hugged and kissed her, Welcome to the neighborhood, Mom. It took a great deal of mustering to sound enthused.

I watched her walk out to her ‘78, well kept, rust-colored Chevy Malibu, climb in, start it up and back out of our driveway. Moving to a window in the living room, I could see her turn left at our street corner, and drive down the road, losing sight of her at the bend that hid her house from our view. The same bend hid her view of our house. That was good.

While living in Indiana I was out from under the family radar, particularly Mom’s radar. I was enjoying the new persona that the separation from family had afforded me. I had different views of life, though I wasn’t completely convinced of them. I had left home to go to college more than a thousand miles away, where I met the guy I was going to marry. His lifestyle and upbringing was completely different from mine; more sophisticated, more cultured. Rebelling against that which was too familiar, too limiting, too sheltered, too blasé. I had been raised in the same house all of my life in a Methodist, Republican family in Massachusetts. An environment that would later feed what I knew to be a pattern of feeling like I didn’t fit into the crowd. The man I married was worldly, had lived in Europe for four years, and had introduced me to something more than cube steak and canned corn.

Well done cube steak, I might add. Great chew food. Served at many a meal in the dining room Mom had just left.

It had seemed a logical decision to ask Mom to move here; my father had crossed over three years earlier. She was alone in her house with all the associated memories. My three siblings, of whom I am the youngest, were scattered in different states across the country. Clark and I had moved into our house the year before and were intent on staying.

Dad was a Pisces, very quiet, yet quick to laugh. Still, that quietness bred a fear of him in me, encouraged me to move away. He wasn’t abusive. I was just a scaredy-cat. In the rare moments when somebody did displease him the verbal explosion was jarring. A huge contrast.

In his early fifties he had manifested a disease that started in his feet, a virus they said, it would, through many years, work its way up Dad’s legs. The virus lay dormant for months at a time, but each time it would take more and more control away from his legs. The doctors said there was nothing they could do. With that in mind and his retirement not so far away, he designed the log cabin that he and Mom would someday build in Maine on a lovely lake. The design had handicap access. He knew he would be in a wheelchair eventually.

Two months before that magic goal of retirement, the virus struck again. He was on his way home, walking with the aid of his cane when he collapsed. A police officer administered CPR and revived him enough that he was still alive. Well, he was breathing.

I don’t remember much of that conversation when Mom called to tell me it had happened. I do remember that she told me not to rush back east; to wait.

As he lay in the hospital bed with all the equipment hooked up to him, yet breathing on his own, Mom looked down at him knowing that her life had changed drastically. Lyn, the younger of my two sisters, stood beside Mom for emotional support.

Gone were the dreams of building the little log cabin in Maine, living on a quiet lake and spending years together. The brain damage that Dad incurred during the moments between collapse and resuscitation left him somewhere in between. Dad rarely knew Mom as anything other than that nice lady, when he could find the right words. Those right words were rare. He would talk, he could talk, but, even though the nouns were nouns and the verbs were verbs, they were totally unrelated to what he was attempting to communicate.

As time went on, Mom continued to tell me there was nothing I could do if I were there. She would rather I wait to attend something happier. My brother David had become engaged. Come for the wedding, dear. That’s more important, Mom said. I obeyed.

Arriving a few days before the wedding, I was taken out to see Dad. Or, what was left of Dad. When we walked into the ward, Mom pointed out where Dad was sitting in his wheelchair and having his lunch. With his back to us, I wouldn’t have recognized it was him. I walked over to him and sat on a nearby chair, attempting a conversation, So, Dad, what did you have for lunch?

Oh, I had a piano with a horn over on the side. He motioned on the wheelchair-mounted tray where his piano had been in the center and where the side plate with his horn had been.

Oh, that’s nice, Dad, nodding my head in confounded disbelief. Yet, I noticed he had responded to the actual question.

It confirmed what I’d been told; he’d never be back. Mom already knew it.

He didn’t know who I was. I was just another nice lady visiting with him. I wasn’t prepared for his eyes. He had eyeglasses with magnifying lenses; his eyes appeared twice their size. When he