I'm becoming you, Mom
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
There was never a "home place," in the scheme of my growing-up years. We were always on the move, although my beginnings were right here outside of Ramona on the very land that my grandparents had farmed. Dad and Mom lived in the house where Dad grew up. You know, I forgot to ask him what that felt like.
I wonder now, "Did he feel trapped in the same dull routine of farm life in the 1930s?" Mom tells me they were more hopeful than anything, planning for the future and scheming ways to increase their livestock and better their own lives.
As it is so often the country thing to do, Uncle Hank lived in the same house as his parents. "So what was it like?" I asked. "I felt right at home," he said with a twinkle in his eye. And then he laughed, "I did find myself doing all the things that my parents used to have to do."
That was a strange feeling — a reminder that you're the one in charge, all grown up now. "I did some things a little different," my uncle admitted, "because Dad had always told me that the place was mine now, the crops were my responsibility and I was supposed to do them my way. So I did!"
Last night found us rummaging around in the attic of the Buxman home where our buddy, Tool Time Tim has lived since he was two years old. We were looking for some of their old toys for our museum display in Ramona.
"So what does it feel like to be living in the house where you grew up?" I wanted to know.
He looked at me with a quizzical expression. "Feel like? I don't ever think about it. It just IS." Well, there's the difference between me and Triple T. I'm always thinking about stuff like that — it's the bane or the gift (whichever way you look at it) of the writer.
My daughter called from California. "So how is the Country Mouse?" she asked. I told her the Ramona News in a nutshell — the rain (of course, we have to talk about the weather), the graduation celebrations, the art show for the kiddies, the latest painting projects.
"It's 90 degrees in California and I'm catching the last afternoon rays of sun on the back porch, running around in my bikini, watering plants," said Jana. She paused. "Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming you, Mom," she said with a catch in her voice. "Because I'm doing all the things that I remember you doing. I'm living in your house, sleeping in your bedroom, tending your flowers and I'm the age that you were when we moved into this house."
She's right! There is a way that we become our parents, year by year, whether or not we're living in the same house as they did. I remember the year that I looked down at my hands and saw my mother's — it was quite a shock. "These aren't my hands at all," I thought to myself, "they're Mom's hands!"
Meanwhile, I'm tending the flowers, mowing the lawn, creating pretty little things, just like my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother before me. While I'm not living in their house, I am spending another day in the country, walking the same ground as those generations before me. How does it feel? Great! And sometimes, just a little scary.
