Where Everything Stays the Same

When you go on vacation to a family home that has basically stayed the same for 31 years, it feels a little like New Year's Eve.

What's around you is unchanged but you have a chance to be different when the clock strikes twelve, or when you turn the key in your lock back home.

Because when you leave behind something familiar that you love [be it a year that's ending, or a vacation home], you leave with a vision for the future. You stop, take stock, look forward. You will never be the same age at the same time again.

Same Old, Same Old
Our house on the Cape remains nearly the same as it was when my parents had it built in 1979--except for a new roof, one of those caps over the chimney b/c raccoons got in once, new siding, a new garage door, a new underground septic tank and a new lamp post. Also, of course, a series of new shower curtains, mattress pads, toilet seats, towels and skillets.

I can list these things so readily because my father has been almost fanatical about keeping it the same. My brother Will once said something about our dad treating it like a church, and you can't move even a chair around.

This house is so in me that I know every detail like a favorite worn slipper. I love the wallpapers my mother picked out for the kitchen and bathroom. The former has notes of red, with pictures of herbs and spices; the latter is sparkly blue and silver. She covered the round chair cushions with pale blue fabric for the dining room. She arranged some "money plant" [aka silver dollar plant] stems, with their translucent coinlike pods, in a classic blue and white Corningware pitcher. She was really proud to show me that. It's still there. My brothers got the retro red and white kitchen table; I think it's from the fifties. Sis's favorite teacup is in the cabinet.

Channeling Mom
My mother is there. This was her dream, to have a house on the Cape. My parents honeymooned there in 1951; they drove from NYC to Cape Cod, New Hampshire and Maine. They stayed in Truro; my Dad caught fish. I have a lovely black and white photo of them on their honeymoon, posed in front of the car.

They lived frugally during their marriage, raising four kids on a moderate salary. We barely ever ate out. They mixed milk from powder, and it wasn't even Carnation brand. [We hated the lumps in it]. But they squirreled away enough for their dream. Soon after they built the house [when I, their youngest, was finally in college], my mother got sick with cancer. She only had one summer there. How unfair.

I can be more in touch with her hopes at the house, with what she loved. Sometimes, I've felt her presence so much that I've cried, or even been afraid to turn out the lights.

The Power of Change
When you go away, you have a chance to consider, at a distance, how you've been living back home. That's why I always bring journals, pens, calendar, books. I contemplate, make lists, consider goals.

It's a gift to have the time and space to do that. To pedal on the bike path, past old fences and trail maps that point to the sea. To be on the beach. To look forward and see only water, wavy, beautiful water. Nothing else under the sky. To walk along in unsteady sand that shifts with each step.

I'm home again [well, in the condo] and I feel like I've had a moment to breathe deep and see more clearly. I still see stress, but I hope to manage it calmly and rationally.

It's after midnight. Happy New Year, my friend.