It took a small village to make it happen, let me tell you. It took a few dumpsters and a bunch of trailers and two really hard working young men I happen to know from school, and NOW we are down the finest of details: just a good and thorough cleaning.

Deep cleaning has never been my favorite thing, let me just say that. Complicating things a little is the fact that Mom has been gone two years already, so quite a bit of dust had accumulated in the unused areas of the house. It’s also a two story Victorian, with 10 foot ceilings, intricate woodwork and stained glass windows. Cleaning this house is turning out to be a massive project. 

But I was thinking about something tonight when I was there, and that’s what compelled me to sit down and write. As I was wiping down woodwork and running my hands down the picture window today, I remembered that when we first moved into that house, Mom wanted to strip all the paint off of the woodwork. She was genuinely annoyed that someone had painted it in the first place. She bought a heat gun and had begun the arduous process of stripping that main picture window. She worked on it a lot – always doing a few inches at a time in between her other projects. But it was an impossible task – after months of work, she’d barely managed to get around one window. When she considered that the main room alone has 4 windows and 3 doorways, she began to see the futility of the project. One day she just tossed the heat gun in the garage and went out and bought a gallon paint and repainted that same strip of woodwork.

And tonight as I was scrubbing that same window, it occurred to me: my hands are everywhere that my mother’s hands have been, a hundred times. I’m cleaning her house, the way she cleaned it, with the same purpose. She kept house for my dad; she made it his home and a thing of pride for them both. They found this house in 1986…it is an 1890’s original, and together they stripped wallpaper off of every inch of the downstairs family room. They painted and rewired and created my childhood home out of thin air it seems. Every room has the original stained glass. Every floor is original hardwood…never had carpet, never been stapled. I remember them planting the rose bushes and the hydrangeas; Mom loved the lilacs and almost died of a broken heart when the city came and cut down the three red maples lining the front sidewalk.

It became infinitely less tiring to do the work when I thought that every pass of my hand was a mirror to my mother’s. When I had a terrible urge to skip cleaning under the heat registers, I could hear the cluck of her tongue, scolding me for even considering doing a half-assed job. (She would have said that, I think…”Sara Jane! Don’t do a half-assed job!) So I didn’t.

Somebody is getting a great house. It may not have central air; it isn’t updated with modern amenities,  but it was always always filled with love. I played ball with my brother and dad in the backyard. I had sleepovers in the big room at the top of the stairs, had my first movie date (on a VHS tape that I rented from a movie store!) in the living room, and stood for prom pictures on the front step. My mom made a million and one cookies in that kitchen, rocked my children to sleep in the living room, and played every game in the world and made every craft known to mankind with them in that house.

Her hands were always busy; I think it makes this task a little sweeter, to be busy there and get it ready for sale so Dad can move on without this extra financial burden.

I haven’t really been nostalgic until now. We moved into and out of a lot of houses in my youth – I learned quickly not to get attached to walls and paint and pretty windows. It’s what’s inside the walls that matters, and we always took it with us when we left. I won’t be sad when the house goes because what matters isn’t there anymore.

What matters lives in Fairmont now, in a gorgeous ranch-style-double-garage-corner-lot-central-air-filled home. What matters lives in Nashville and sends me snarky text messages on a semi-regular basis to keep a smile on my face. What matters is curled up next to me right now, two reading and one watching a veterinary documentary because that’s what she’s going to be someday. What matters is outside gathering up the remnants of our last family day on the water before I start back to work tomorrow.

And what matters is waiting for me somewhere close, just out of reach but I can still feel her, and still hear her, whispering, “don’t do a half-assed job.” I won’t, Mama.