I’m sitting in a house … my house, climbing the walls once again.… My kids are headed this way with their spouses and families in tow. I’m crazy excited to see them! And I’m also freaking out.
I have no idea why stepping into the mom role push me over the edge these days. I love my kids - I can’t wait to see them. We all get along and typically have a great time together. There’s simply no rational reason why I’d be anything but excited as I anticipate their arrival. But in truth, a pretty big part of me wants to bolt, and I’m sitting here looking at vans.
Maybe this feeling isn’t linked to them coming, but to them going. Maybe it’s knowing that I’ll be left behind when they leave that haunts me. Remembering all too well the heartbreaking transition of being a single mom - a stay at home - homeschooling mom - suddenly turned empty nester. Hmm… maybe this feeling isn't about my having a home - but the inevitable reality of being left in an empty house once the visit is over.
Bingo.
It’s funny how houses represent something so different from vans. I associate owning a house with safety and security - a sense of home. In my mind, houses contain space that should be filled with family, friends, love and laughter… a space that in truth, I desperately miss and so want to be in…
Yet when faced with the empty silence which I know will return at the end of each visit - I long for the solidarity and safety of my van. I’ve always been alone in my van. I expect to be alone in my van… it feels normal … and more importantly, not empty.
I think the van holds promise of movement - change - adventure. And it holds the life I’ve struggled to create for myself, and myself alone. Particularly in choosing such small vans, there is simply no room for anyone else. And therefore no reason to long for them.
Yet, in November of 2022, I bought another house … this time, not for myself, but for my grandsons. (In fact, I’ve turned the master bedroom, by far the largest room in the house, into a playroom.) I’m holding space for them: creating a space beyond myself… but unfortunately, it’s also a space so easily (and often quickly) emptied.
I have always loved the reference to the Semmering railway in the 2003 movie Under the Tuscan Sun: "Between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come."
Perhaps this little gray house with its hot pink door is laying the tracks for Gigi - a nomadic grandma with an enormous extended family who of course, will visit often. And perhaps, that's simply a part of my life that hasn’t come yet.
As a young mom, I vividly remember pulling up in the driveway of my parents farm house. My mom and dad were always waiting on the porch. As I unload the kids and family dog from the car and everyone rushed to embrace. Yet, in all honestly, it never once occurred to me, what my parents did after standing on that same porch to wave goodbye. (Whatever it was, clearly it didn’t make my father happy. )
So perhaps, waving goodbye from the porch before climbing into a van and setting out on a new adventure of my own isn’t such a bad plan after all.
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