Liz

It's gone on for four long weeks now. The boys used to like coming home from school. They would throw open the back door, drop their backpacks on the floor and head straight to the pantry for first dibs on snacks. Now they kick around outside in the driveway and in the backyard with the dogs until they can't hold out any longer and come inside what used to be our comfy home. Over the last month it's turned into a dusty and disarrayed house full of cardboard boxes, piles of things and paint smell. Various people come and go beginning early in the morning and today I answered the door in a short, purple, sleeveless nightgown with no bra and my hair was a bird's nest piled high on top of my head. All I needed were a few feathers for fluff for the full effect! I was a sight but the polite painters showed no fear, averted their eyes a little but otherwise acted just like they always do.

The realtor says that the competition to our 40 year-old house is new builds so we need everything to look perfect. All bed linens must be white. All towels and shower curtains must be white. All the walls in the whole entire house must be one color, basically white with a tinge of gray. She has pointed out all kinds of small things that I never noticed before, like a little corner piece of the brick around a flower bed that is missing. It's close to the front door and there's never a second chance to make a first impression! We have had to remove half of the furniture and all the art on the walls so now there are only a few framed mirrors are still hanging. NO family photos out anywhere. The idea is to allow the potential buyers to imagine themselves living in the space. All the cabinets, closets and drawers are freshly painted and empty. We are going for the "no one lives here" look which is extremely challenging to actually live in for anyone but near impossible with four sons and three dogs who shed. I'm really hoping there are just a couple of quick showings and then a solid offer so we won't have to keep up the whiteness and have clothes in our closets again.

Something cool did happen today. In the midst of clearing out old dusty boxes from the very back of my closet I discovered a real treasure I never knew I was in possession of all these years. It was the box where my mother had kept all of her "special" things like cards and letters from friends and family. Her passports and divorce decree was in there too, along with me and my brother's social security information. There were also blank greeting cards with sentiments she thought were funny but hadn't had a chance to send yet. Those are the best because she had a wicked sense of humor! I have a few boxes of my own special things in my closet and when I sift through the contents, which is not often, I get nostalgic and realize how good my life has been and how much we have lived. I'm also reminded that I have more years behind me than in front of me which makes me older but I'm still way too young to be old.

My mom passed away in 1999, the same year Rafa and I were married. Her name was Liz and she would have been one of those fun, eccentric grandmas who rode around on her white Honda scooter wearing her fun purple "motorcycle shoes" with her purse bungee corded down on the back and wearing no helmet because she liked feeling the wind on her face and in her hair. (All of this is absolutely true by the way. Really.) Mom would have told imaginative yet slightly bizarre and disturbing tales to tell her grandchildren. This was a real talent for her! Her stories were full of colorful characters that usually had one outstanding and odd trait. I remember a character who showed up in her stories pretty regularly. He was an old man who had had a stroke that left the right side of his face droopy. His skin was heavy and all that drooping made his eyeball look like it was bulging out of his face. It was hard to understand him when he talked but when he got to drinking no one could understand a word. He would drink Jameson whisky and sing old Irish pub songs but no one sang along because nobody could understand him. I once saw a photo of her grandfather Pat and realized he was the inspiration for the droopy faced character. His eye did look like it was bulging out and everyone said he was a mean drunk. Her stories were never dull. This is why discovering her special box was like stumbling across a collection of the rarest of gold coins. It was full of short stories she had written. Some were handwritten on loose leaf paper, some written in spiral bound notebooks and some were typed on a real old-fashioned typewriter. I have not had time to read any of them since I'm busy making my house white and empty, but scanning the pages I can see that some of the dates go back to the late 70's when she would have been about 25 years-old. I can't wait to dive in.