Timeless Me

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2009

When We Were Home

Four weeks ago Mr. Timeless Things and I went back home to Lubbock. It was a bittersweet visit. It was a difficult visit. It was and is very hard to talk about as we went in rescue mode to help two beloved people but while we were there, my mother Rosa, my sister Cyndi (who lives here in SA too) and I, drove to my old neighborhood where my husband and I used to live with my dear mother in-law. I was sitting in the back seat of my car as I had let Cyndi drive us around because I wanted to take a photo of our old cottage. As we got closer, my heart started to pound evenly with the Tejano song that was playing on the radio and as I got my camera ready, I told Cyndi to slow it down to a crawl and there it was...our first home. It was as if the house was coming out of a fog in the Scottish Highlands-in my mind anyway-and it was still white and very much the same as when we had lived in it sixteen years ago. Tears started to well up in my eyes and I got a big lump in my throat the size of a Cuban lime and I started snapping away. My mind wandered inside the house and away it went, in to the kitchen where Willa, my mother in-law, would make her famous 14 Day Fruit Cake. It went in to the backyard, where my husband would chip and putt with his golf clubs. To our bedroom where I had my stack of library books ready to read each night. On it wandered, in to the living room where my Willa would watch television AND listen to the radio at the same time. My God, it was so painful to remember but oh how I wanted those memories to keep flooding back and they hit me with such momentum that I became short of breath. Hurt.

*******

The house is still there. Marshall, Willa and I used to be there. Living and loving. I would give anything to have those days back again. There is always something so beautiful about humble beginnings that if given the choice, we would definitely do it all over again, Marshall and I. And Willa would still be here...making her delicious cakes and loving us. I miss you mama.