The year after the massive wildfire took out half our city, rent prices soared.
There were not enough homes still standing to ever meet the demand.
My mother had been on a tightly fixed income for years, and was finding that
(even though this area had been her home for over 30 years) she was being priced out of anything that she could afford.
She told me across a noodle house table, “I want to stay, Honey, but I just can’t.”
The words she spoke were hard to swallow,
so I just slurped my noodles, and stared down at my own hands.
She had lived with us for a decade at that point; There to help me pick up the pieces when anything felt broken, there for the birth of every daughter, there to help me survive anything that came at me with her willingness to do whatever it took in any situation.
I couldn’t even imagine my life working without her in it daily.
I hated that I had to even try.
But, my brother had given her an offer she couldn’t refuse to come up to live with him.
He’d let her live there rent free. She would just have to take care of her personal bills.
So, barely able to speak to each other without falling apart on the morning of the move,
she packed up a truck in what had been our shared driveway, and climbed in, waving goodbye with tears in her eyes after pressing a fortune cookie fortune into my most anxious daughter’s hand that, when opened, read the then extra meaningful:
“Proceed with confidence.”
That is exactly what we have done from that moment until this.
I learned to get my footing doing my life here without her, and she settled into an unfamiliar life four hours away just past the cattle lands and bare rolling hills.
We have FaceTimed each other approximately 8000 times, for every tiny detail.
I ask her about things like her doctor’s appointments since her stroke, and her knee replacement.
She rolls her eyes with me at my teenagers, so I remember that I’m not alone in raising them.
She never wanted to say she missed living here, because she believes that sometimes God just moves you on. She just said she had “surrendered to His will.”
She never wanted to sound ungrateful for what my brother generously provided her with.
He has given her safety, and a beautiful bedroom. There is stability there.
There is a hot tub, and a beautiful pool she is free to get in.
But there is a thing that a daughter knows in a way that no one else really does:
There was a sound in her voice when she talked about things, a still-longing sound.
It was the sound of a person wanting to come home.
For five years now she’s worked on building community, making new friends, but she always said when she came back here to visit, as soon as she came up over the hill into the tiny town we’ve lived in since I was a child, she could breathe in a way she didn’t think she could still.
Before the move she had tried to work out a way to stay here any way she could think of.
She had even added her name to a long waiting list of seniors on a low-income complex a mile from me, but with how many other names were on it, there was no knowing if it would ever reach hers.
Then, one day in August, a message came to her phone when she happened to be here visiting us.
That complex had called telling her that they still had her name listed,
and an apartment had just come available, and would be hers if she still wanted it.
She and I were so excited at the possibility, and we drove over to take a look at the place, but the second they showed us a third story unit without an elevator, we knew her newly titaniumed knee would never make it living there.
I descended those stairs behind her that day headed back to the car trying to hide the face you make when someone has just yanked your rug.
I didn’t plan on having my hopes up of getting her back here close to me.
I had gotten too excited for a golden opportunity, but this was clearly not the one.
The apartment managers told her that it was fine if she turned this offer down for medical reasons, but to know she would only have one more chance to accept any available places in the future, before they’d have to start just passing the places on.
They let her know that the next one could be years more of a wait.
Knowing we were probably giving up our only chance, we just nodded and sighed, knowing it was out of our hands, and climbed in the car quietly to drive home.
My heart just wants to take care of her as she ages.
Any time I’ve needed comfort, her arms are where I have run.
It only seems fair to stay close enough to help support them.
I just want to be there to return the favor; To help hold her up.
But then, mere months later we got a call from that complex again, saying that we would never believe it, and they didn’t either, but one of the most desirable, ground-floor units had just come available, with every single thing she needed and wanted, and it was hers if she decided to take it.
Not many days after that call, after a whirlwind of plans, I sat in a conference room with my mother as she signed lease papers for that unit.
We walked over to it afterwards, down the pathway beside the butterfly bush, and unlocked the door for the first time.
She just stood in the emptiness, smiled, and slowly spun.
Seeing her there, I remembered another time I’d stood in the middle of an empty room with her.
We had gone back to my childhood home to see if anything was left there we needed to pick up after she and my dad had split and had emptied all the major stuff.
As she had her back to me that day I reached over onto the littered carpet to pick up an old hot plate trivet that had been in our kitchen all of my growing up that had read,
“Dear House, you are so very small. Just big enough for love, that’s all.”
I tucked it under my shirt;
The last remaining remnant of the home that I had loved.
We took one last look, just the two of us and, for the last time, we locked up.
After her divorce she was left with nothing of consequence, and when she moved to my brother’s five years ago, all she even owned was a bedroom set, a handful of clothes, and her old car.
No furniture, no dishes, not even a single trash can.
She mused as she touched the bare walls that day about all the things she’d need to make this tiny place feel like a home.
In her voice there was still a hint of worry about how she’d make it work, still, but in her eyes I could see happiness, and dreaming.
I saw her climb onto a scaffold of trust.
I watched the sparkle of possibility return near her laugh lines, and, in that moment,
I remembered the words of that old trivet again.
I assured her that people loved her, and I was sure I could figure out a way to get things donated, or given to her.
I told her to trust me, then I stepped forward in faith like she has taught me to do.
My mom has dedicated her entire life to helping others, and pouring into the community.
I was positive people would be happy to give at least something back to her.
A few days later I had the idea to create a registry for home things she needed, to see if anyone would be willing to gift her items, sort of how they would for a wedding or a baby shower.
There are far too few times in life we get to do something like that.
I posted the gift list on Facebook, tagged her for her friends to see, and held my breath.
I waited to see if there was a response.
So many responses came in the following days that I have barely been able to keep up with them.
Box after box addressed to me for her, each one including a note saying “Welcome home” with some comment of how much my mom had meant.
People have shown up out of the woodwork from all eras of her life.
There have been friends from her college days, friends from church 5 moves ago, previous coworkers, friends of mine she’s never met in person, and even several complete strangers who just heard about an elderly woman trying to make a home that wanted to pitch in.
The local hardware store heard about it and offered to donate paint for me to paint the interior.
I had someone text asking if she needed a washer and dryer, or maybe a refrigerator.
One morning I opened my front door for fresh air and the packages were stacked so high I could hardly exit, and I let out a whoop so loud my youngest came running thinking that something was wrong. Nope. That was the sound you make when a heart’s-cry gets answered.
It has been absolutely incredible.
A once-in-a-lifetime Christmas for all of us.
She just keeps saying it feels hard to even take in that,
little by little, other people have almost completely furnished her entire home.
Her worries are vanishing because of outstretched hands.
I like to picture my mom one night a month from now settling into the little place she almost stopped dreaming of, and how she will look around at a new rug, furniture, pots, pans, dishes, and fluffy towels she worried about getting, and will realize that she now lives in
The House that Love Built.
That it is the kind of love that just comes back to you when you spend your life trying to love others well.
Through child sized eyes I watched her so many times give from a near empty purse to someone.
She regularly sacrificed so that I could have something I dreamed of.
She never got new things. I hardly ever saw her in new clothes.
Like so many other mothers she so often stood in the background of my Christmases as my eyes grew wide, and I squealed and yelled, thrilled, while
she spent many Christmases with nothing much under the tree except pine needles needing to be swept.
This Christmas it thrills me to know that I had some little part of stirring up something that turned into an absolute outpouring back onto her.
She deserves every hand towel, and every candlestick for the things she has done.
To: Sandi
Welcome Home.
Love: EVERYONE
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
