Good Houseleaving

“People like clean houses” one Realtor tells my sister and me. “You should paint the walls a neutral beige; maybe take down the shower curtain and replace it with a sheer one. Definitely take the pictures off the mantel—you were planning on that, weren't you? People like to be able to see themselves in the house.”Dave and Scott from Dustless Hardwoods come to the house to strip the carpet and refinish the floors. I am waiting for the Rescue Mission truck to come pick up the furniture we are donating and for Habitat for Humanity to come pick up my father's table saw and jigsaw—hulking pieces of machinery that no one else knows how to use, or has space for. They have been sitting in the basement, waiting for someone to decide what to do with them, since my father died in 2009.I watch Dave and Scott pull up the carpet; it takes only minutes. The oak floors, stained a light mahogany, are revealed. And there is another, darker, stain on top of the light mahogany from the rubber-backed carpet we had installed in 1972. By the picture window there is also the water stain from when the African violet was overwatered.When I come back from the local diner, where I've gone to get a cup of tea—there is nothing in the house—Dave and Scott have started to sand the floor, and the dark stains of accidents and of intention have disappeared—the wood is a light, milky color. “That's its natural color,” Scott says, “sort of a honey color. That's what it will look like when we've refinished it.”Are we leaving the house behind, or is it leaving us behind? I wonder about this as I drive east over Route 690, winding through Syracuse, to the New York State Thruway. Past farm fields and back to my own house in Clinton. It is only an hour's drive, but it seems much farther. That night, I dream that my mother is sitting on my bed, here in my house in Clinton. I still have a pair of her pajamas, which still smell like her. They're tucked under my pillow. I wonder if that's what caused the dream.In Walden, Thoreau asks, “What is a house but a sedes, a seat?” He found many a site for a house, he said: “There I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life” (chapter 2).Only someone who has traveled lightly, and lived with no particular attachment to physical objects, could say this, I think. The house my sister and brother and I grew up in is only trivially a place to sit—a place to watch the world go by. Gaston Bachelard says that our childhood home leaves an imprint on us. It is not simply a geometrical object, but it is “our corner of the world.”For us it was the site of arguments, and Saturday morning cartoon watching, and evenings watching “The Carol Burnett Show,” or “Nightstalker,” or “The Partridge Family.” It is where we decided when it was time to go to Sears for new clothes; where I signed student loan promissory notes against my father's advice; where I sat and cried when I thought I couldn't possibly meet the expectations set by my professors; where my mother, sister, and I decided that it was time to think about moving Dad into a nursing home. It was a place in which we decided things both trivial and important.Its furnishings changed slowly: Chairs and tables that moved in in the late 1970s were still around in 2012. The couch, a castoff from my aunt and uncle, made of a faux velour with a flowered pattern, appeared sometime in the early 1980s. Most of the things that entered the house never left. Except us, of course. And eventually everything else. Everything, that is, but the wooden floors, the walls, the appliances—the things that could easily be adapted to new occupancy.Our house was a complicated place to sit and watch the world go by; it was the lodestar of our lives but it was too small to hold as many people and pets as it needed to hold. It was the place to which we returned at the end of the day, during college vacations, where we watched snow fall against the backdrop of the streetlight and wondered if there would be school the next day. Where we listened to the forced-air heat turn on and off and the sound of snoring from our parents’ room as we lay in our little beds, thinking of the snow falling, frost collecting in the corners of the windows, creating intricate yet thoroughly geometrical images, which we would discover in the morning. They were little surprises made out of what had been given by winter in this part of the country—snow and ice and cold, transformed into lacy designs on glass that was cold to the touch.Thoreau's form of house is something one can inhabit easily, and leave just as easily—it does not leave its marks, or give unexpected gifts. It is like a history that one can simply choose to let go of, a way of thinking of oneself as distinct from that history and those attachments. But human beings are not so easily pulled from places or from their history—though maybe Thoreau's point is that they should be. Maybe this lack of attachment to things and places is virtuous; it seems very Zen to me. I guess I am decidedly un-Zen.In her book about homesickness, Susan Matt traces the ways in which homesickness evolved in the nineteenth century in response to the changing demands of the workplace and ideals of individualism. Homesickness, she argues, came to be seen as a mark of immaturity, a shameful emotion. “Psychological advice and American folklore both enshrine and reinforce the ideology of individualism, promoting separation and ceaseless mobility as normal. Ordinary Americans have learned to follow the emotional pattern for rugged individualists: to separate, move on, and find consolation in sweet, nostalgic memories.”1 Thoreau, for all his countercultural tendencies, seems to be right in line with this willingness to think of home as unimportant. Maybe, in addition to being un-Zen, I am also somewhat primitive, or backward.When I went away to college, I spent the first few weeks wondering if I'd done the right thing. I could have gone to college near home, lived at home. But on the other hand, I was anxious to get away—I didn't want to be burdened with my family, I wanted to live my own life away from them, seeing them only when I wanted to. But I also missed them in an abstract way once they'd dropped me off at my dorm, leaving me with strangers from Buffalo, Long Island, Massachusetts, Cleveland, New Jersey. We first-years were told that everyone experienced homesickness for the first few weeks, and that the secret was to keep busy. After a while, it would go away. We went to talks and orientation events. We did our swim tests. Classes started—there were parties to attend, new people to meet. And the feeling of homesickness drifted away—eventually, my college campus became more like my home than the little white house was.But as I sat down to dinner in the enormous and grand dining hall with its maroon velvet drapes, at the long heavy wooden table engraved with the initials of former students, surrounded by those strangers from distant cities—many of whom had become my friends—I would sometimes imagine my family sitting down to dinner at the laminated table made to look like wood in the cramped kitchen of the little white house. I imagined my sister getting up to retrieve the milk jug from the screen porch that served as an extra refrigerator from October to May. I imagined the television on in the nearby living room—it would be the “Nightly News” with Peter Jennings—while my parents and my sister and brother ate boiled dinner, or creamed chipped beef on toast.I stand in what was my mother's bedroom, applying putty to the natural wood sashes of the windows. When the Realtors walked through to determine the listing price, they eyed the windows with some concern. “Original windows?” they asked, a little apprehensively. “Yes,” I said, “from when the house was built in 1956.” They nodded, looking with concern at the faded and water-stained wood, the dirty aluminum frames of the storm windows. One window is cracked; it was always hidden behind a polyester drape, so who knows in what decade the crack appeared.I try to see the little white house the way they see it, but all I can see is what it must have looked like when my parents, newly wed, moved into it, newly built: The unbroken, clean new windows would have looked out on a neat little neighborhood. A few old apple trees, left over from when the neighborhood had been an orchard, would have been framed by the clear, small windows, but otherwise there would have been no trees or shrubs.This house, its windows, and this new neighborhood were purchased with an $11,000 mortgage. My parents paid it with his salary from the Solvay Process factory and her salary as an executive secretary at the Nettleton Shoe Factory in downtown Syracuse. When she became pregnant with me in 1963, she left her job, and they lived on his salary. He had taken night classes to become an electrician, had moved up from security guard, and had gotten a pay raise that would allow them to have children, and her to stay home with them. She started working again in the 1980s as a janitorial assistant, then as a library assistant.She was still working as a library assistant in December 2011, though she was 80. When she felt a twinge in her back while taking a turkey out of the oven for Christmas dinner, she didn't think much of it. But she had to take time off work—it wouldn't heal. And then she broke her leg when she tried to get up from the flowered faux velour couch. And then she didn't go back to work, because she had bone cancer. And lymphoma. And brain cancer. By then, my father had been dead over two years, and she was alone in the little white house.The pictures from my parents’ move-in day in 1956—in black and white—show a house so new that it looks unlived in, with a shiny new floor, brand new woodwork. Simple and clean. There are no towering blue spruces in the front yard; no yew tree obscuring the bathroom no no of the or of or of the and to they moved in, the house is and not as clean. Maybe if they had thought of this house as an than a home, there would be to do to human beings are not to we them They to a form of both and The we have as part of our of home are but they are also who about the home have been more than those who did not A feeling for home with the and to a for our for a people in all of The form of our is a not of our but of it is the of by and from the of from those we we in farm we Realtors to the house, But by the time we it, it no be simply a the light putty to the putty up and back to the putty to the of the I look out at house next She and her moved in to their house around the time that my parents moved into our house. died about as as I can has new windows. house is like but the on this were built with the They are with about of living a small living one small a kitchen very and small My parents, sister, and I lived here with a a a a and a of we one by to I was the first one out the my mother was the house and all the on the were built by the out of an old apple of the apple trees into the in their the of The one that grew in our was the apple tree in the neighborhood to it over in a storm in the house. little too to with us take a this the would have it but we didn't give We our mother to apple with them. takes too long to up of those little to a she She to at or And the We them, she at the looked like been given one of the from our she never would have been to take a didn't look like They were if they were they were very addition to the made by they had of and that grew like on I always wondered how the that came off our trees could be the that we at the and my for our little were on this as as on I would that our had been in the and I'd try them But they My father them would them in a to the back of our and them. he we should the tree my mother, sister, and I it and for its the their own little When I grew up and moved to my own house, I tried to some so that I could them to my own neat little They all the They were with other and wouldn't think about the space taken up by the and the and and out the and the of us had about to When do the that seems like a The to think we this come in to they we can the screen since to a house that's than they us. I think the of are sister and I a that was by which that we had about of our own in that of it taken up by our and of and The other of house space to of us came out of a on the couch, a pulled up to the wood table in the space in front of the television We all spent of time in someone while someone else watched while our mother or and up near the front as we and and were in the the and the human and lived on top of over the couch, the We sat on the that we the that to the father would have to over us, about it as he the up in front of the to the house, or next to a A of We thought nothing of live with my and a in a house that is the and room in the my brother and his live in a house in my sister with a two children, a and a The that from the of a house built in the went from to the of the house a few the the were or at the as little as But in and in the new house in the by over that point on, getting of the American house its with of living the house was about The little white house built in was it was in and in it is still It gotten but in to other it is what the of that Americans think of as for a life seems to by and though our get I who will want to an house in Syracuse, New in this house were in or or the New York it would a few But here the Realtors are not my and of the house just an but a It is not just a to be and so it is to see it as the Realtors of they are being about this, and we are sister does not want to the house, that our mother has She would like to find a way to keep it, to have one of us it. part of me to it from to it, like a of our But I that this is I have a house so do my sister and her family and my brother and his of it is at was a house for a factory and his in a school who left the to the the other a school and former secretary at a I imagine the they felt when they it. had only lived in old when they were They had never lived in a brand new house, had never this this the it was only for the two of it was And it was brother and I are college professors; my sister is a We all went to college, all came back for all and moved into We made new though this one is still there in our as home. But it and I wonder how we could all have lived here at the I that I've to more more space to of the of up is being able to a home away from a new home. people move but this little of where our parents lived and we grew up is with people who have for or children, our moving on as we leaving parents in parents who the and on that are to we were in the of getting the house for I found my thinking of the little white house as a place of My to get it on the came to a much to my this I found living with my was and I that I could was off at college, and it was just my and me in our house, and the always had about who does who does the who them who takes the who the back as we had to the as a no a were the of our or taking her to had to our our I found to night night, thinking that I had to have some from this of living with and thinking that I to a to I thought about the little white house. I thought of its sitting there not lived in, behind the I imagined how the living room would look as the how the would in that house in which I'd lived so many years, with no one there to this of no one there to inhabit it, to give it And that, I made me for the little white house. It needed someone to live in a I thought about back to it, wondering if I could go back and in that house, in that into that basement, it could become my house, my The new paint and the refinished made it like a new house, and I thought that I could move in and over the next few years, it into a house, down some walls, the living Maybe it could be both new and maybe I could go I about back to their own childhood to be and My mother's about my time he spent the time he spent with his his to go but on or to his mother for her to move back to her family home, and I wondered if thought about it. She wouldn't have done so when we were children, and I by the time all moved on, her family home was no her family her own parents long her all living with their own in to move back to my childhood home drifted I is that I think. We small We with the the and the We things that might be a up but are like But sometimes we those small the basement, the to the or go to the the about in the winter or about getting up in the morning. We our new for our own our trees, them Realtor back of the house. blue spruces over the house, the front My father and our them in the late They have and and the of of a small of over the They are of all trees father grew up in the for many to go back there on to his He would up and while them back to the little white house in Syracuse, and them in the blue spruces and a tree grew in the and were eventually but the two in the front are and they to this house from all the other on the When I was I that one of them might be a Christmas tree for the of Syracuse, and I thought we should it My parents wouldn't of it. trees made our house in this my parents My mother to look out the window at them, and they our house from the world of We could that we lived in a who American says that people who moved to the in the first of the century would drive all night to get back home to the for the only to turn around and to the on were the so the were and I imagine that my though from the than the did a drive I my mother that he went home to see his mother all the she thought he should she imagine of the and of his home, back to this little of Syracuse. I imagine them in the watching them eventually they came to over the little white if he could that he was still in the in the the trees and the than living in a of Syracuse, getting up and off to his factory a for the nineteenth and early Susan Matt says about a new way to think about “The able to their homesickness were the who to it were for life in American they the of the Americans felt more to move in of and became of American and the Americans they should themselves to the of and move when people from small the were thought to have an attachment to home, an attachment that them from in a was thought to be a of attachment to a home a of if that home had nothing in particular to it, other than being small with that were by by little that sat on or on that to by with small And people would to those would the pull that could not be to those who thought that homesickness was an to be gotten not was only on the for a few much to our it for A it, which made us all But I by about a they'd moved in, to find that the blue spruces in front of the house had been The house looked The yew in front of the bathroom always a to also been I that yew trees are so maybe the new wanted it I trees or like in when my parents the white aluminum had been the white from which had been in the aluminum themselves but a light color. The of the front hidden by the towering been with what would have been my mother's on a day in October I leaving some on the front for the new I was in for an and thought I might just by. But the of to the house on that day was too and I felt a like an I for and them I by the house in December I saw some to the of the house, the of a