Houses

It’s 11pm and I’m lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Again. Ugh, I hate this insomnia nonsense. I’m practically narcoleptic in the daytime – I think I fell asleep at a red light the other day – but at night it’s just pointless.

This has been an issue for me for years. And my go-to remedy has been to build houses. I would pick a location, design a floor plan, pick all the floors and the finishes and the paint colors and eventually furnish it. I have a whole colony of dream houses in my insomnia Rolodex. The last one I was working on was a four family compound – a house each for us, my parents, my brother and his family and my besties. They were on a hill overlooking a broad expanse of Oregon valley and built around a circular park and gazebo.

I was just starting on the park lighting when mom left. Big circular strings of Edison bulbs suspended between the gazebo and all the houses like spokes on a wheel, only with those color changing LEDs mom likes so much. I can’t finish the complex because I can’t design a house for mom, and I don’t want a complex without her in it. So now I can’t build houses anymore. I just stare at the ceiling or watch an entire series in a night on Netflix. Man, is my life exciting or what!?!

I’m about three inches away from becoming one of those crazy women who talk to bags of hashbrowns in the frozen foods aisle. I have entire conversations with mom in my head, and sometimes they slip out into the real word, too. This missing her, the enormity of this loss is a hand steadily tightening on my throat. I can’t breathe. I can’t talk about it. I mostly just try to pretend like anything in life holds color and meaning when it’s really just sawdust in my mouth. But this is what I do now because I can’t build houses. I build new memories and I pretend they could be real someday. I talk to the person I miss the most.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll think about video chatting mom right before the babies go to nap. It’s been a daily tradition for two years and I think about it every damn morning. It’ll ring and she’ll answer, still in her nightgown and glasses with frowsy bedhead hair. She’ll have the camera pointed at the ceiling so I “can’t see how hideous she looks”. I’ll say, “hello, Mother” in my best Paddington Bear voice and she’ll respond, “hello, daughter” in hers. And we’ll talk about everything and nothing and she’ll laugh at my jokes about her stubborn, infuriating grandchildren and I’ll laugh at her jokes about my stubborn, infuriating father. She’ll make me feel better because that’s what she does. And when Pook melts down (because it’s always her and never her brother) mom will hang up while we’re both still laughing. She has the best laugh.

Someday I will build a new complex for the people we have left. I’m not there yet. So for now I have conversations with my mom in the dark, staring at the ceiling while the house quietly slumbers. Hello, mother I say. I know exactly what you’d tell me to do in this situation and I’m trying mama, I’m trying so hard, but you never told me how to live without you and I don’t want to figure that one out yet. Just stay with me a little longer. Don’t hang up just yet, ok?