The Blue Door

I walked along the road looking for the house with the dark blue door and the red and white roses growing up the broken trellis beside the left-hand window.
What would I do if they painted the door another color, or taken down the trellis? How would I know which house it was if they'd altered anything? Had they taken down the battered 6 foot wooden fence that surrounded the yard as if it were protecting a fortress? The house had remained the same for 18 years, why would they change it now. I could remember my last day there like it was yesterday, instead of 10 years ago.

“Why should I stay here? What is there for me in this town?” I cried in exasperation.

My mother looked at me like I had lost my mind I and shook her auburn mane of hair. I could feel her icy blue eyes staring through me, like they always seemed to these days. My mother had been raised in the city all of her life and could not understand my need to be rid of the brownstones and concrete. She was completely at ease having her house close enough to the next to reach out and touch the neighbor from a window. Her parents, and her parents parents, had lived here since birth and she had adopted their habit of thinking the wide open expanse of the country was for hillbillys and rednecks.

Mom finally stepped forward and screamed at me,

“You don't care about family anymore? I'm not enough for you to stay? Your family has lived here all their lives and now you want to move half way across the country and desert the only people who care?”

“I am not leaving for good, just for college, after I get my degree I plan on moving back.”

As usual I could tell by the rolling of the eyes and the instant look of disappointment on her face that I had said something wrong. This was the woman who raised five children on her own and I was the only one that wanted to go across the country for college. Not only across the country but to Mississippi! In her mind she could not understand why the city college or the university five miles away was not enough for me. As usual she was only thinking of herself, and accusing me of the same.

I had grown up in this town of a million people and seemingly the same number of cars. For me life had always been breathing smog and being in classes with 50 other people, most of whom I never knew. I wanted to know what it was like to live in a small town and go to a school where there were 20 in a class and we all lived in the same area. I wanted to be able to walk out on my front porch and see deer in the yard instead of rats and concrete.

To me it was a matter of saving my sanity. I had always felt like I was born a decade too late for my ideals. I am more old fashioned than my mother in some matters and I have always wanted to know what it would be like to have a yard to take care of and fields to tend to. In the country I could have the dogs I have always dreamed of. Hey, I wasn’t the one that asked for siblings, I asked for a St. Bernard and got 5 sisters.

“Are you even listening to me?” I heard her break through my thoughts.

“Of course I am listening to you. How could I not listen to you, you are loud enough for the neighbors to hear…which would be the case even if you were whispering.”

“That is enough of your smartmouth. Fine you want to be adult enough to talk back and move across the country, desert your family, go ahead and do it. Just don’t expect me to spend my money to talk to you.”

“I didn’t ask you to. And besides there are holidays and summer I could come home.” I tried to reason, knowing full well I was not going to give up the December weather in Mississippi for the December weather in Michigan.

My mother let out a short,shrill laugh of disbelief and said “Yea right, you know what, don’t bother. If you are going to desert your family, do it right, don’t bother to come back.”

“You cant mean that!”

“Oh I mean it, you are throwing your life away moving down there. U of D offered you a full scholarship and you are giving it up in order to become a redneck. You may as well give us up to.”

The words cut me like a knife, but not as much as it hurt when she walked away and slammed into her room. Tears falling like Niagra Falls, I walked to the door. After laying my keys on the table that had sat so long the carpet had permanent marks, I walked out the door.

My mother kept her word for 10 years, she never answered the phone when I called and never wrote back. As for me, I kept my pride and never came home again. Until now. When my sister called to tell me my mother had passed, I cried out in pain. I regretted never having been able to part peacefully with her. And now here I was, back in Detroit for the funeral and hoping I could find the house.

I smiled to myself as I looked up from my musing and saw the familiar blue door, leave it to mom to allow me to find my way home.