Heavy Things, Part 4

Terrifying predictions made almost a year ago are slowly becoming more and more concrete. I've been living in the same house, the house I will refer to as 313, since I was eight years old, and it will be going on the market soon. My mother has put her heart and soul into making this house a home. Over the years, every single room has been remodeled, reflecting her tastes, with the exception of the bedroom I spend most of my time in, which I did myself.

The swimming pool that she swam in as a teenager was moved from my grandparents' backyard over here to 313 back in 1992. It was a tiny, 12x24 above ground pool with my grandfather's handwriting on sections of the aluminum sides. On any given day over the summers, there'd be loads of people packed in like sardines on our tiny deck, sitting in beach chairs, MomMom sitting in her corner where we rigged a picnic umbrella attached to the railing with bungee cords so she could be comfortable watching her family frolic and play from her perch as the matriarch. PopPop would drag a chair to the other side of the yard and sit under a big tree that used to be there, and that was his perch as the patriarch of the family from which he watched us all act like crazy people, puffing away on his cigar and laughing at us.

In 2005, the above ground pool came down, and Ma made the decision to use the money she inherited when MomMom passed away to have a gorgeous 20x40 inground pool put in. More decking was built, a fence installed circling the pool, a retaining wall built with rocks my brother would find on the side of the road, and flowerbeds that Ma tends to every summer sit atop it. There's a recessed space in the concrete that surrounds the pool where a piece of the aluminum with PopPop's handwriting is nestled under plexiglass. When the pool was officially opened for the first time, we dedicated it to MomMom and PopPop, and my mother, father, brother, and I held hands and all four of us jumped in at the same time. Our backyard is referred to as Club Evans - Everyone welcome. It's a place where our family and friends gather; where we all eat, drink, and are merry. It's an escape from reality.

There was a beautiful sunroom added on to the back of the house as well, built by my brother and a few guys that worked for my father in 2004. During the Christmas season, an eleven foot tree with white twinkling lights and adorned with all of MomMom's Santa Claus ornaments sits right in front of the wall of windows. It was in this room that my brother proposed to his wife.

313 has been a host to birthday parties, Christmas parties, graduations, showers, anniversaries, surprise parties, even a funeral reception, over all of these years. Ma never had any qualms about opening her home to guests. But for all the good memories that reside here, there are just as many bad ones. It was in the living room where I came downstairs to find a state trooper waiting to arrest my father for a DUI in 2000. It was in the kitchen, the family room, and my parents' bedroom where bombs were dropped, mostly my father's doing. Sometimes I think more tears have been shed in this house than good times had.

Some people have actually had the nerve to say to my mother that she's spoiled and materialistic. These people have never lived in this home. They aren't the ones who lie in their bed alone at night sick with worry about what tomorrow will bring. All these people are just outsiders looking in. They don't know that reason behind the new cars, the material things, was my father's guilt. Ma traded in the Navigator after the divorce because she could not afford the car payment and my father had hit rock bottom. What these people do not know is that the LEAST my father could do for all the strife he has caused is keep Ma in the house that she built into a home with her own blood, sweat, and tears. I speak both literally and figuratively. But he refuses to acknowledge that he only has one place to go but up. He chooses to reside in the hell he built around himself.

So it's just me and Ma in this house. And we cannot afford the mortgage anymore. We don't know what's going to happen, all we know is that we have to abandon everything that is familiar to us. We don't know where we are going to live. We don't know what we have to get rid of. We don't even know if the house will sell. We have to accept that it is time to start over.