Moving Memories

Our next door neighbors are selling their house. When my mother and I got home the other night, we saw the realtor was there with a family looking at the house. Later on that evening, I stuck my head out the back door, and they saw that they had left and Judy was outside with the kids. I walked over and told her I had been tempted to introduce myself as the crazy neighbor. Or tell them that the house was haunted so they wouldn't buy it. :)

We chatted for awhile, and in the course of the conversation about house showings, open houses, and having to leave everytime the realtor called... it reminded me of when we put our house up for sale back in Alabama. Oh man, was I ever angry. I harbored a deep seated fury at the realtor. I refused to call her by name. I think I just referred to her as HER. I was rude and insolent. But I was angry, and she was my target. I was ticked when she would call and we'd have to leave so someone could walk through our house. I was mad that I got yelled at every time I left something laying around. I did not like the thought of people in my room. One day before a showing, I decided to make some "welcome" signs. Chalk it up to being 14 and immature, I suppose. I hung them everywhere. Things like, "this house is built on an Indian burial ground". "This house is haunted". "Ghosts live in the attic" "Stay out of my room. If you want to know what it looks like, look at my sister's. It's exactly the same". "Bloody Mary lives in my mirror" (If you've ever heard that ghost story, the college where the legend originates is very close to where we lived.) My personal favorite- "There are rabid, flying raccoons living in my attic".
Of course, my mother saw them and took them all down. I don't think my intention was really for the people to see them. I think I just wanted my parents to know how mad I was. You know...in case they hadn't interpreted the sullen teenager vibes correctly.

Emily did her share too, just not as blatantly. She and her friend April would take all of the flyers out of the information box in the front yard and throw them away. Soon after they were replaced, within days they were gone. I don't know how long it took for HER to realize that the flyers were disappearing at a rate faster than normal. And they could never prove who did it... but someone drew a mustache and beard on a bunch of HER posters. And no, it wasn't me. Believe me, I'd claim it now. :) I did see Emily and April with suspiciously dirty fingers one day. Looked almost like permanent black marker....

We both went around the neighborhood one day and kicked down all the for sale signs. And we'd sit on the curb and glower and glare cars that passed by. And the brave souls that stopped to get a flyer (if there were any there) must have had to briefly wonder if they were going to be attacked by the two sullen kids on the curb. Although I think we thought we were more intimidating than we really were.

My mother still claims that I failed 9th grade geometry on purpose. How that logic makes sense, I still don't understand. But she's convinced that some part of my warped mind thought if I failed geometry, I'd have to stay there. Even I wasn't that dumb to believe that would work. I failed geometry because it is an awful, evil thing that someone came up with specifically to make people's lives miserable. Not to mention that my teacher was truly a horrible man. Who hated kids. Especially girls. And who made no effort to disguise his disgust for people who didn't get geometry. 3 strikes for me. My father forced me to ask him for tutoring. He laughed at me and told me he wasn't interested in wasting time on a hopeless cause. Geometry was the bane of my existence. He used to make me stand at the chalkboard and solve a problem in front of the class. Knowing full well I had no clue. Then when I finally cried, he would call on different students to "walk me through" it. It got to the point where I almost wished we would move, just so I could get away from him.
I'll admit to the creative posters.. and knocking things down.. and I'll even admit to hanging up on HER when she called and I happened to answer the phone. (I did that alot.) But failing on purpose to stay there was defnitely not part of my scheming.

But I did outdo myself on one occasion. I wish I could say it was Emily's fault too... but she was just a bystander. This was my boneheaded mistake. Purely by accident... though I don't think my parents are still convinced about this one either. My best friend Teresa had shown me how to make these awesome candle holders. What's involved?
One empty glass bottle.
Multi-colored wax candles.
One book of matches.
One paper bag to prevent a mess. (See, I was thinking ahead)
The only thing missing.... bucket of water in case of emergency.

See where this is going?

I decided to do this little craft project after school before mom got home. The general gist is to hold a lighted candle over the bottle and let the wax drip all over it. It makes a really cool design and pattern all over the bottle. I'd tried to do this in my room and closed the door to keep Emily out, but... she drove me nuts until I let her in. After making her double pinkie swear to keep her mouth shut, I said she could watch. (A double pinkie swear is like THE ultimate- you never, ever, never break a double pinkie swear.) Things were going okay.... until I dropped the candle. Before I could process what had happened... suddenly my carpet is on fire. Emily and I sat frozen, eyes wide, and horrified. It's amazing how you don't think clearly in a crisis. The fire was between me and the door, and while it was not too big to jump around... my brain froze and I stayed put. Emily was sitting closest to the door, so I shrieked for her to get some water. Let me describe the layout of our house, in order to get the full effect of what happened next.
You had the kitchen/dining room that led into the living room. Then there was a hallway that led from the living room. My bedroom was the first room, then there was a bathroom right next to me, then Emily's room.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity and Emily didn't come back. (Again... the bathroom was right next door.)
All of a sudden Emily came tearing back, wringing her hands and crying.
"I can't find a glass! They're all in the dishwasher!"

"YOU WENT TO THE KITCHEN?! THE BATHROOM IS RIGHT NEXT DOOR!" I roared at her.

She stared at me with her mouth open for a second and scurried off to the bathroom. At that moment I was thankful for the bath toys that she still played with, even though I teased her mercilessly about how at 10 years old she was too old for buckets in the tub.

We dumped them over the spot and surveyed the damage. I had done it this time. Right in the center of the room. There was no way of hiding this one. Did I mention that this happened right after we'd put the house on the market? Like, the day after?

Emily looked at me, suddenly even more horrified.

"Mom is going to kill you."

I gulped. "I know"

"I mean, she's going to like, REALLY kill you."

"I KNOW. Quit saying that."

I was trying to think of my best tactic. Call mom on her cell phone or wait until she got home? If I called her, and she was driving I ran the risk of her getting so mad she'd get in an accident. But if I waited until she got home, then I'd have the full brunt of her undiluted wrath. If I gave her fair warning, she'd have time to process it before she got home to wring my neck. And stewing about my impending doom was unbearable. I called her. I braced myself for the yelling. But it didn't come. All in all, she was rather quiet. Which is never really a good sign.

I cried. She listened. Then said, "I'll be home in 20 minutes". Then she hung up.

"What did she say?" Emily asked.

"Nothing"

She didn't say a word- just hugged me. I tried not to think that she was giving me a farewell hug, but that was a distinct possibility.

My mother didn't yell like I expected. Don't get me wrong, I was in big time trouble. But when I told her about Emily running to the kitchen, and not being able to find a glass... I think she found it funny . I think that cut some of the anger. That little stinker had the biggest knack for getting out of trouble- usually it irritated the snot out of me. This time I was just thankful it was enough to take the edge off of the trouble I was in.

They ended up having someone cut a piece of carpet out of one of the closets to replace the hole in the middle of my floor. The carpet they put in the closet was a completely different colored square. Everytime I opened the door and saw it, I felt a twinge of guilt. I often wish I'd written the story down and left an explanation for the people who moved in. I wonder if they ever wondered what the story is behind the different colored square.

Needless to say... I was not allowed to have candles for a very, very long time.

I think about how devastated and angry I was all those years ago. I thought my life as I knew it was over. I was furious that everything was changing. I'd made up my mind that I was going to hate wherever it was that we moved to.

But a strange thing happened after we moved... I moved on. Life moved on. And looking back, I see that there was a reason for me to have ended up here. I've had some pretty amazing experiences the last 10 years, that I otherwise wouldn't have had if I hadn't gone through all the "miserable" in order to get here.
And dare I say it? Change isn't necessarily all bad. Sometimes I think we need to be uprooted and planted somewhere else, and it's the somewhere else that allows us to really blossom.

I still can't reconcile the change that Emily's death brought into our lives. Up until this past year, I thought moving was the biggest traumatic experience of my life. That pales in comparison now. But somewhere, a little voice is buried deep in a heart that's desperately pretending to still be deaf, and it's softly saying that life isn't over. And that although it's not something I'll ever "move on" from or "get over"- it is something that I will live through.

And that's my hope that I cling to.

In some ways, that carpet is a little like my heart. A piece of that carpet was damaged beyond repair. And the piece that fixed it couldn't replace what was lost. It will always look different. But it was enough to cover the hole.

It was enough to cover the hole.