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Monday, March 17th, 2008
A house is a home where love dwells
I generally don't like to write about my family in less than flattering terms here, because that's WAY unfair to them. When I look back at all my old entries about the dramz I had with them, I get angry at myself--they don't have diaries or blogs or anything to defend themselves on, so what right did I have to complain so publicly about whatever happened in private? Plus, for all I know they read this (mama papa?), so the last thing they deserve to read is some rant about something I can't bring myself to say. But it's coming to a point where I don't quite know how to go about addressing it.
We have lived in our house for 24 or 25 years. We are the first people to have ever lived there. It is not in good shape these days. Our ceilings have leaked from the showers for a long time, but in particular, it leaked right in the middle of the living room, in a spot where there is no plumbing. But the spot never grew, so we did nothing about it. (How could we do nothing about it?! If you suddenly get a mole but it never changes shape or size or color, do you just leave it there?! Cancer can always come back!) We recently decided to have a plumber check it out, because hey, there's a huuuge stain in our ceiling, which we normally would have painted over but didn't. The man came and measured everything, and we told him about how also? The basement's been flooding for about a year. Every time it rains, it floods, and we do nothing but rip up whatever carpet is there and put in a new one. Patrick can't live in his room down there anymore because it's uninhabitable. The plumber measured the walls and, stumped, cut a square in the ceiling in the spot--it was bone dry. There was no leak in there. He cut a hole behind the couch, right where the copper pipe had a teeny tiny pinhole leak. That was fixed, and now we don't hear water rattling in our walls anymore.
But there is still the matter of the HOLE IN THE CEILING and the HOLE IN THE WALL and the uninhabitable basement. Dog hair on couches, cat hair on clothes, spots where bugs were killed on the wall, floors scratched long ago by Jordan, cat-torn furniture, pee forever in the carpets, in the walls. There is no way for our house to be perfect with so many animals we adore roaming around the place, and I don't want our house to be perfect, but there are ways of controlling it. And I don't understand why my parents are resisting that.
In October, Patrick will no longer be living at home. I technically still live at home when I'm not at school, but (hopefully) I won't be in a few years when I graduate. Neither of us is there all the time, we come and go in intervals, but we do still live there for the time being. I don't care if my friends see shoes in a pile or a cat sleeping on my dinner plate, but there are some things that just embarrass me, including stains in the ceiling with holes in the middle. It's one thing to say, "Excuse the mess;" it's another to have to explain why there's a wall panel leaning against the TV.
But this is a very sensitive topic to bring up in my house. Last year I won the award for Bitch of the Century when I came home to a slightly messy kitchen and went off on how I could never have friends over, it was embarrassing, why didn't we ever really clean anything, I can barely touch anything without getting hair on me, and I'm pretty sure I used the word "shameful". I had sort of half meant it to be funny, but obviously my mom extracted the truth from it, because when I walked back out into the kitchen, she was sobbing. It was the worst I have ever felt in my life, because my mother does not cry. And now? Since that moment when I told her I was ashamed of the house we kept? She cries all the time. And it terrifies me.
Shameful totally wasn't the right word at all, it's not that. It's just, I want people to be comfortable, and I want to be comfortable too. And sometimes I get in that house and all I can think about is the stinkbugs that watch me when I sleep and the Daddy Long Leg infestation and leaning down to spit out my toothpaste and realizing that Mo peed in the sink two minutes ago. My mom hired a cleaning service to come and help her out, and I guess it makes a difference, but still, sometimes it makes my skin crawl. I would never ever in my life say that my parents have no taste, but they used to have better taste. Some of the stuff in our house is so wicked cool, like the framed pictures of Olde Plimoth and the little cottage statuettes and the stenciling, the stenciling my mom did when they first moved in! And the maintenance of the house has everything to do with what their priorities are these days, which I think are: retire and go out to restaurants. And of course it's 25 years later and they're not the same people, but aren't you supposed to hold onto that spirit you always had, somewhere inside? I only see it come out in a random burst of song, or in my dad's memories of their bike rides, and then like that it's gone.
I feel like you can sense that when you're in my house, that all the spirit is gone. Ever since that awful day, whenever anyone makes the slightest comment about an unsavory domestic condition, she confesses that, "I've always wanted to just get rid of everything on every horizontal surface." That's horrible to me. They have this very weird way of going about doing things that really upsets me: enjoy something once, enjoy it to the ground, and then get rid of it. There is no sense of pride in anything, there's no attempt to hold onto anything. Sure we used to bike ride, but now we don't and we won't. Sure I used to knit, but now I don't and I won't. Sure I used to take pictures, and thanks for the new camera, but now I don't and I won't. Sure this house was great, but now we'll leave it in this terrible condition, sell it for what we can get, and move into another place and start the process over.
What probably upsets me the most is that they’re forgetting that I’m still there. Patrick’s still there, though briefly. They may not invite people over, but I would like to. They may not be bothered by holes in the ceiling, but I am—the joke was over a month ago. That house is the only home I’ve ever known, it’s in my favorite part of town, it was the perfect place to grow up, and they’re content to throw it away when they’re done with it. Come on, Dad. Every single one of us turns to look at your old house whenever we pass it, including you, because it means something to you. Don’t you think our house means something to me? Don’t you think I’d like to drive by it when I’m older? Don’t you get that what you want to do—sell it for whatever you can get and let someone else deal with it—is giving up all agency you have over it? More importantly, don’t you get that you’re robbing me of any agency I have over it?
It’s my house too, and I’m so terrified of telling my dad that, because he can be scary. We have a jolly good time 90% of our time together, but there are those days or those nights or those moments when I wish I was never born or I never spoke or I never replied. Because what it’s going to come down to for him is money, and I’m only 20, I’ve never dealt with money before in my life. How can I tell him what to do with his money when he’s the one who pays upwards of $50,000 a year for my education, does my taxes for me, and fought for five years before I finally relented and got a job? That’s what it’s going to come down to, and no matter what I say, it’s going to end in a big fight about how I don’t have enough responsibility, I don’t help mom enough, I don’t understand the budget he’s set up, &c, &c, &c. Emotional appeals don’t work on him—you have to talk sense, and practically, I don’t have any say in any of this. But figuratively, I do, because I live there right alongside them. It’s my house too.
Phrases like “It’s my house too” don’t work on him.
Pat and I have discussed this at length. At lengthity length. Ad nauseum. Concordantly. Ergo. A lot. Almost every single conversation comes down to how the house is falling apart, our parents’ morphed personalities confuse the shit out of us, and there’s nothing we can do about it but—like them—wait it out. When my mom called tonight and said the TV finally died and that we had a small one in front of it in the meantime, I asked about the hole in the ceiling.
“What about it?”
“Has it been fixed?”
“Certainly not.”
“And we’re having people over this weekend?!”
“They just won’t go in there!”
I want to tell them, Stop covering up your faults with paper towels. Stop hiding from me because I can see you. I know that everyone living under that roof is in denial of their depression (me included) and needs a fresh start. But that doesn’t mean pretending like the “old house” never existed. Because when you try to better yourself, you move on but you don’t forget. You don’t forget like the past 25 years never happened. You hold onto parts of it, the good parts, the framework and the infrastructure and maybe not the plumbing but the people and the trinkets. Let’s renovate the rooms. Let’s all sit down together, all four of us, and let’s think about what needs changing. You can say what colors you like, and you can say where you need the computer for work, and you can say that the dog is not allowed on the couches anymore in this Ideal Future, and you can say okay then here is how we achieve this financially. Let’s stop letting one person make all the decisions just because that one person holds the bank account passcode. Everyone has a say, so everyone needs to say it.
But that’s not how things work in my family.