Strongly Worded

A Weekend at Home

I just got back from a trip to see my parents in my hometown. Because my car was buried under snow, I took the bus. Every time I take the bus home, I vow I’ll never do it again.

The route takes forever, and consists mostly of the tedious Mass Pike. It includes stops in Worcester and Holyoke, detours into the wasteland of central Massachusetts. Along the way, strangers with crass accents and battered luggage shuffle on, like me, going nowhere fast.

I’m always impatient during the three-hour drive, and when the bus finally pulls in, I am tired and resentful. I grouse to myself about disproportionate ratio of hassle to weekend. I look around at the other passengers; they’re mostly people on daytrips. I’m probably the only one who’s actually from here. As I get off the bus, I experience the distorted vision of grown people returning to childhood haunts; everything looks smaller than I remember.

I scan the parking lot for my parents, forgetting that they sold the tan Pontiac when I was in college, and that they’ve aged a lot recently. We greet each other warmly, and suddenly I’m back in daughter mode. I sit in the back seat of the car, confronted with a tiny quiet town; my parents’ choices; and the reduction of a weekend to deep sleep, the movies, and TJ Maxx.

The slam of the front door signals a transition to the familiar sanctity of home. I enter and smell the house smell, a mix of Pinesol, cooking, and fresh laundry. I enter our house and pad around in the kitchen while my mother cooks.

As I watch her, I remember and appreciate how she managed to create balanced meals with side dishes and salads, for her and my dad and my brother and me, every single weeknight. The meal engulfed us in a solid routine: we were called to the table at six, sat in our predetermined seats, passed the dishes and the salt, and exchanged daily dialogue about school trips and family plans. After the last bite was swallowed, we’d all murmur brief thanks, and then my brother and I would argue over whose turn it was to clear the table, and then one of us would grudgingly do it. I’d traipse upstairs and sit with my dad and my algebra, leaving my mother in the kitchen clearing up, her profile exposed, backlit, in the window, an image ingrained in my consciousness.

Now, our dinners are much quieter. My brother is away at school, and my dad sits quietly, absorbed in his own thoughts. The conversations feel unbalanced. I have so much to say about my life, about the city, work, and friends, and an ever-expanding menu of things to do. When we talk, I take up most of the airtime. My mom doesn’t mind; she likes to hear about all my adventures. Now and then she’ll interject with a story about family friends, or things happening in the school where she works.

After we clear the table, we watch a few shows on TV, and then I go up to bed. I’m startled by the country noises--squeaky floors, slamming doors, murmuring wind. I’m acutely awake, aware of the smothering silence. I miss the monotonous traffic of Somerville; my urban lullaby.

The weekend slowly unfolds. I eat, sleep, read, hang out downtown. I avoid the glances of familiar people from my past whom I invariably bump into at the drug store or the Chinese restaurant. Over vegetable lo mein, I talk to my mom about people moving, friends on the West coast, long-distance relationships.

My mom shudders. “My worst nightmare,” she says, lightly but not, “is to be in the middle of the world with you on one side and everyone else on the other.” My parents are immigrants and all their family lives in Israel. If I moved to the West coast, she really would be in the middle of the world, all alone. I worry about what my parents will do when they’re old--move back? Stay in the U.S.?

Later, we return to the house and I leaf through the Bulletin. “Where’s the rest of it?” I ask my mom, and she laughs, reminding me that the weekly paper has always consisted of 36 pages. I observe that the headlines are the same as always: town meetings, squabbles over parking and the latest school committee issue.

Flipping through the paper, I’m seized with impatience. I can’t believe that my parents still live here. I can’t believe that that our condo is the same one I lived in as a toddler, a child, a teenager. It’s been almost thirty years since my father accepted a “one-year” visiting professorship in the U.S.. They bought the condo here thinking it was “temporary.” At the same time, they invested time and money in a “dream house,” a duplex in Tel Aviv, in which my aunt and her family planned to occupy one apartment and our family the other.

My aunt oversaw the building process and consulted my parents on all the important issues. My brother and I were consulted on issues pertaining to paint. I requested that “my” room be painted peach; my brother chose “grape” for his room. We saw the house right after it was finished, during one of our annual summer visits. The house was new and empty and huge. Even without furniture or appliances, it looked much nicer than the cramped condo we inhabited in the U.S.. I imagine my parents felt wistful when we left. They rented our half to a family that uncannily resembled ours, with an older daughter and a younger son, a scientist dad and a schoolteacher mom.

When we returned to the U.S. that year, I was relieved to be back in New England, back with my friends, my life, my element. I felt American again, settled in the "temporary" home that had always been permanent to me. My mother had the opposite reaction; she was tired, deflated, and claustrophobic when we returned. The nerves and exhaustion brought her near tears. She dropped the suitcases and stood in our kitchen with its crowd of harvest gold appliances. “It looks so small and yellow,”’ she said, her despair stabbing at my relief.

She endured the tiny yellow kitchen because she nursed a hope that we’d move, either to a bigger better house in the U.S., or to our own house in Israel. A few years ago she surrendered this hope and remodeled the kitchen. Now it has a stone floor and a microwave and shiny white cabinets. She told the realtor, finally, to stop sending us open house notices. She’d been getting them for almost fifteen years.
But she still hates the house, even as she is resigned to it. That's the worst thing. Last summer she asked me,"Why do I live here? Why do I live like this?"And I tried to comfort her. I said that the condo is fine. It's cozy and nicely furnished. Maybe it's time for some upgrades ... I suggested she refinish the floor ... frame the artwork in the bedroom ...

The condo is not, objectively speaking, a bad place to live. But it's never what she wanted, and now she thinks it's too late. She sees other people's spacious homes, homes they chose and tended with intention, and she regrets the aspects of her life that happened by default. This frustrates me. I admire so many things about my mother, aspire to be like her in many ways. But I can't stand that she never stood up for herself or for the life she wanted. I want to shake her, sometimes.

And all I can do is do better for myself.

Posted by Dori at 6:32 PM