"Maggie May" Used to Echo In Our Family Basement

I stood in the basement of my childhood home. A couple of boxes of old Math Textbooks were all that was left. The circa 70's finished basement with its tiled floors and brown paneled walls complete with the must have built in bar was barren-much like my heart felt at that moment. Every last scrap of life built up year after year, milestone after milestone have been removed. God, it was like shoveling more dirt on the grave burying it for good. Stab. Man, it hit me in the heart how easily it all was tossed, cleared out. Wiped away like a dry eraser board went the tangible memories. My eyes started to burn and fill with my salty tears, first slowly and then in a rush. Damn. My siblings hauled it all out in no time at all and it felt, disrespectful. It felt like there was no moment to say, I don't know.... What would I want to say? It just felt so cold, callus, hardened how quickly our lives, remnants of our life became dust to sweep away on the cold basement floor.

I used to roller skate to Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" on the cold basement floor when it was gray concrete. My sister and her best friend's Barbie apartment complex was down there that they made piece by piece with every little miniature piece of furniture. In our teen years, my sister and I claimed the basement as our apartment. So, from childhood playground to sacred living space where the reverberating echoes of giggly laughter and serious conversations dissipated into the ether.

Deeper in the basement, the unfinished section where the oil burner was and my father's workbench stood loaded with old computers, typewriters that produced high school book reports, my mother's old Singer sewing machine that gave her such grief with the temperamental tension, tools, tools and more tools, coffee cans filled with nails and more old books....cleared away. Just like that, gone.

I remember the one and only time my father got mad at me. I was watching him work with a hot glue gun and a soldering iron at his workbench He was always fixing things himself. I was fascinated by it. He warned me not to touch it. What did I do? I touched it. I remember a good blister on my finger from it. This was the only time I can remember my father spanking me, one firm swat to the hiny.

My mother passed away in 2006 and my father, at 85 just last month. My sister, brother and I are moving swiftly in clearing the house readying it for sale. There is no time to process; there is no time to ease into the idea of saying good-bye to our childhood home; there is no time to digest that my father is not on this earth any longer. When I do have time to process it, I feel a punch in the gut pain.

I stood there in the basement, and I opened one of the math books. There was his beautiful swirly handwriting of his name and the name of his college. It must have been what he used to learn to be a math teacher at college. His large perfect cursive were the windows to his soul. Handwriting is full of personality and my father's large, precise, fancy script handwriting matched his fun, zesty and yet, attention to detail personality to a tee. I found among the boxed books my mother's nursing licenses, first her Licensed Practical Nurse and then, her Registered Nurse.  Damn. These were hard earned, something I didn't really appreciate until now. We were tossing it out. I kept those.

I know memories are not in things; they are in your heart and mind forever, but yeah, no. Memories are in one's life's work, the day to day planners with personal notes to oneself, a favorite shirt, a favorite mug, plate, bowl, the pens one wrote with, the music listened to, the books read, ...Memories are tangible.

My family house is now empty. I guess this is my ode to my family house. It wasn't always peaceful in that house, and as a matter of fact, there was quite a lot of pain and heart ache in that house. Yet, it was my house, the one I grew up in. I just didn't want it all dismissed so ...easily, irreverently. I respect the life lessons learned there and at the root of it all, love won the day. Love carried us all through, especially in my father's last dying days where us siblings who were distant and detached for so many years, finally got it together and found each other again when facing the foreignness of death.

So, I guess, now that I wrote this and gave my house its due, I can release all the physical tangible memories, ones that I didn't keep to the universe. I picture me holding a pearly white dove and tossing it upward watching its wings spread and flap toward the sky.

I feel peace like the sweet exhale you express when you clap close a favorite bedtime story leaving you feeling sleepy and satisfied as you kiss a child a good night's sleep.