Changes

Winter and memories, for some reason they go together. This season of winter is no different. Mother is moving into an assisted living home, needing more care than she can get with part time help. She has agreed to go. Yesterday I went to the house I grew up in with 2 brothers, one sister, dogs and two wonderful parents, to pack up some of mothers belongings. The house is so quiet, and so cold. I stood in her den where she sits and what used to be my bedroom, looking out the same window I used to stare out while lying in bed watching the radio tower light make its loop. Nothing is the same now. Mother will not return to the house to help select what I will bring to her, she does not want to see it, she wants to remember it as it was. She is so much stronger than me, she understands changes for better or worse. I pray this change is for better. But I cry when I think of some of the changes that face our family as we make this move with mother. It hurts my heart. I don't want to give up all that was, but the memories. I want to be a little girl again dressing to go out the door on another winter day to play with the Nelsons down the street and feed the
goat that lived right next door and see Papa smoking that horrible pipe and mother snaping at him because he plays too much golf, but getting a glimpse of them kissing in the breakfast room later on. I want to hear the sounds of all of us fussing and playing and eating on the door that papa turned into a breakfast room table so there would be enough room for everyone to sit. I want to hear Mother playing the piano for Papa to practice and then to hear her play Moonlight Sonata for herself. To hear her say just one more time that she had a degree in music from Ole Miss and therefore she had the right to refuse to vaccum. I think I'll call her right now and get her to tell me that so I can begin to feel better. sweet memories, sad changes.