If you’ve
sold a house, or bought a house, you attach a particular meaning to that phrase. As a seller, usual contract terms require that on closing day,
you deliver a "broom swept" house; no more, no less. As a buyer, you can expect to take possession of a home free from dust – bunnies; no more, no less.
Last week, I
played the part of the seller, with broom in hand. So
why is it that when I started at the top of the hardwood stairs in my parents’
home, and swept my way to the bottom, I felt like I was doing so much more than
just prepping for sale?
Although I
know an actual, definite number exists, it’s impossible to know how many times
I climbed or descended those stairs over the years. But I do know this: some trips were more memorable than
others. Like this one: When my sisters and I were young, my dad complained that we sounded like “a herd of elephants” as
we ran up and down the stairs. We were “young ladies.” To help
us learn what that meant, we had to walk up and down the stairs – quietly, almost
noiselessly, mind you – for about an hour while he and my Mom sat in the
kitchen listening to some very muffled footsteps.
The good
news for us was that the stairs turned a corner at the top and sometimes two of
us took mini-breaks to sit down for a bit while one of us carried on the “lesson”
for Dad. I’m not sure we learned
anything but this happened more than 40 years ago and I remember it very
clearly. Up and down a staircase? For almost an hour? On those little legs? Isn’t that child abuse? Nah. Call off the social worker. Not one of us needed medical attention. It’s what people used to call raising
children.
Here's another staircase story, although I remember this one with much less bemusement than the “young
lady” lesson. One warm summer night, I was sitting on our front porch glider with a
date, probably doing exactly what a young couple would do as they sat together
on a warm summer night on a front porch glider. No doubt we were in the throes of as much
passion as we could muster on a front porch, albeit a dark front porch. Then from inside the house, we heard a bit of
mayhem, some bumps and thumps (like someone slamming into the wall at the
bottom of the stairs, right inside the front door), muffled voices, and then
silence.
Later that
night, I learned that my Dad, while drunk, mostly stumbled down
the stairs, hit the wall, and was just about ready to confront me on the front
porch with as much passionate outrage as he
could muster given his state. My mother
stopped him cold, and the moment passed. I remember my sister telling me, “Mom saved you.”
Skip ahead
about ten years. I descended those
steps as a bride. A young lady in a satin gown with a long train, I posed for pictures with my parents in the living room. No, I didn’t
marry the guy from the front porch, and no, I didn’t have to confront my Dad’s
alcoholism that day. He gave me the gift
of sobriety for my wedding weekend. (A
few years later, he made the choice daily to live the rest of his life sober,
this time as an unspoken gift to his grandchildren.)
Final staircase story. The last night my mother spent in her home included a very
labored, exhausting trip up those stairs. One difficult step at a time, she made her way to her bedroom. She left her house
the very next day via an emergency squad gurney, so she never stepped foot on the
stairs again. (For decades, every time
we talked about downsizing out of this too-big-for-her house, she dismissed
us: “They’re going to carry me out of
this house.” She was right.)
Despite the lesson we endured, I’m positive my
sisters and I spent years stomping up or down the stairs as outraged teenagers,
and my brother did his version of the same. The wall at the
bottom of the stairs (and the people in house) somehow held up against a number
of drunken bumps over the years. The staircase
showcased a few brides, and new babies being carried up for naps, then older grandchildren
(especially three little boys at once, sounding not unlike a herd of elephants)
running up and down the stairs during visits and sleepovers. This
time, the din went unchallenged by Pop-Pop.
In the end, it posed a formidable challenge to my Mom, who never, ever stopped
loving the house she and my Dad bought all those years ago, without even
looking at the second floor.
So there I stood at the bottom of the steps, next to a small
pile of dust ready to be scooped up. From
my spot, I looked into the kitchen, then past the living room and the dining room to
the doors of the sunroom. The silence felt overwhelming despite the fact that for me, the life of the house had been
seeping away for months, leaving nothing more than a space, a shell, a
structure to be “sold and settled” as the realtors say.
Except for that day, except for that moment while I gathered
the dust at the bottom of the stairs. Right
then, I gave myself permission to gaze; time to see just about every family moment we created
in that house. Then I checked the lock,
and pulled the door closed behind me.
Walked past the glider – that same one! - and stepped off the front
porch.
I drove away. I teared
up a little bit. And realized this: that broom swept exceedingly clean. With my last look, I saw kinder, more joyful
and more comforting scenes than I would have imagined. Slammed doors went silent. Shrill voices sounded soothing. The only tears we shed were happy ones. The piano was always in tune; the cacophony of music and voices, plus the television and noisy toys was inexplicably harmonious. Even as I saw that very last morning at home with my
Mom – so tired, so tired of everything her illness represented – the lens revealed only
the love, not the despair and desperation that crowded my thoughts, and surely hers, that day. Only the love.
In this empty home, the people are gone. The connections remain. And those can never be swept away.
