Generations and Other True Stories (34 page)

When I arrived, I immediately noticed the empty spaces where familiar objects had been, but I could see that Mother had kept too much. She admitted she would probably have to hold another yard sale at the other end of her move.

For the next few days, she and I sat on the front porch by the hour, remembering the years, listening to the call of a hoot owl over near the foot of Sleeping Lion and the town's dogs barking at the moon just as they always have. We walked about the yard, every foot of which had borne the brunt of all our boisterous childhoods. Mother picked an armload of ripe peaches from the tree on the west side of the house. I picked up three ordinary rocks near the fence to take back to Dallas as keepsakes, one for me, one for each of my sons, who had spent several blissful, unforgettable summers there. Together we visited my grandmother's grave in the cemetery on the hill.

A day or two before the movers were to arrive, the new owner—a rich man from East Texas—appeared. He walked about the house, bragging to Mother about the changes he was going to make. He was going to rip out this, tear out that, renovate this and replace that. He planned to undo the changes that had been made to modernize the old place over the years and restore it to its original condition, he said.

“Well,” Mother said, “you'll have to dig a privy out back.”

I wasn't there when the movers came. Mike had accepted the difficult duty of seeing the house empty, as it hadn't been since he was four.

We talked about it later on the phone. Mother had broken down a couple of times, he said, when old friends had come to say goodbye. But, all in all, she seemed happy to be moving on. We concluded that we should be happy along with her. We comforted each other with the thought that although our home now belonged to somebody else, its best memories would always be ours.

So why am I still sighing? Is it because my only remaining tie to the town I've always called home is my grandmother's grave? Is it because the next time I journey to my mountains, I'll go as a tourist and not as a home child returning? Is it because, in some deep corner of my heart, I believed I would live in Mr. Grierson's old adobe again someday, and would recapture some small part of that innocent, beautiful world I dwelt in as a child?

November 1993