Leaving……and Saying Goodbye

The silence was deafening. I stood in the hallway, searching for the pictures of me and Leon and David Mark that showed us proudly sporting those Lions Club Little League uniforms. Mom had every team picture from every year lined up from just outside the back bedroom all the way down to the kitchen. Today, those walls were bare. Not even a hint that we’d once shared the diamond with Kent Wilson, Terry Brown, Glen Burns, Robert Earl Melton…..if I had the time and inclination, I could still name every player in every picture a half a century after Mr. Glen Chalk snapped those old black and white photos.

I picked up the phone. For the first time in my life there was no dial tone. I was awash in quietness. I thought of the ballgames I had “called up” on this phone. I remembered a few girls I’d tried to woo over this line…..’course, that never worked. Leon would be wrestling the phone out of my hand or yelling “Hey, Billie Jean” when he knew it was Pam. Daddy would clear his throat if you were on the thing for more than a minute, “Son, we don’t need any idle chit chat, we might get an important call.” Shucks, we didn’t get two calls a week and they would be from Aunt Jessie or Miss Purvis.

I ran my hand across the tape that was hastily plastered over the fist sized hole. David got an “important call” from a girl telling him she was finding someone else. He gave the sheetrock a little “love tap”. Mother shifted the 1954 Lions picture with Leon and that old Rawlings glove over the tape and no one ever knew.

I turned the corner into the bedroom and listened. Nothing! Not even a squeak out of the old springs on the single bed that used to sleep me against the far wall. That old thing had been demoted to the upstairs in 1961. It once heard the rumble from above. That was Leon’s Kamikaze yell! It was the only warning I would have as he launched himself off the top bunk on the opposite side of the room. I’m telling you, he literally flew across that hallowed space and landed chest first on my bed! I was doing some flying of my own to roll out of his way. I’d bang against the wall as Leon smashed those springs to the limit. Before we could recover and protect ourselves David would be in mid air hurdling toward us.

Dave would sometimes fall short, hit the floor, and jar the whole house. Mom would stick her head in, “You boys don’t get too rowdy”. She’d do the same thing when the pillow fights would erupt. The bloody nose didn’t come from the pillows; it came from the contact with the floor when you got knocked off the top bunk! I have seen feathers floating past the light fixture.

Don’t let the silence fool you……this house once rang with laughter.

I eased into the living room. I remembered when it would have been a sprint! But today I didn’t have anyone chasing me. The only thing left was the old couch Aunt Beatrice re-upholstered back in the sixties. The fireplace had shrunk over the years. It once seemed to take up one whole wall. You wouldn’t believe the pop corn heated there….or the arguments on how to best lay the backlog. We’d dress on that hearth on extra cold days. You’d burn on one side….and freeze on the other. We turned in unison.

I was off in college when Mom replaced the braided rugs with carpet. I fussed at her for a while. That big rug in the center made a great ball field. We would lay baseball cards down for defensive players and roll a marble across “home plate”. A wooden pencil made a perfect bat. The hitter was trying to knock the “ball” to the outer layers of different colored braids without making contact with any portion of the cards. Maybe I was a little old for braided rug baseball by then…..but it would have been nice to have kept my options open.

We’d stretch out on that same rug and make our Christmas wishes as we poured over the Sears and Roebuck catalog. We didn’t have the money for any of those things, but that was a rug to dream on! The Christmas thought turned my eyes instinctively to the corner where Mom always placed the tree. I just thought I knew desolate….. The tears, which had been lurking since I opened the back door, found their way to the surface. You wouldn’t believe the uproar in this room when me and Leon and David got to throwing those silver icicles over the top branches!

I lingered in the kitchen. How empty it looked with nothing on the stove. I remembered how her hands never stopped as she rolled out those biscuits. I smiled at how she would put the turnip greens on top of the cornbread one night and call it “hay stacks” and then slice the cornbread in half the next night, cram the turnips inside and call it a “sandwich”. She didn’t fool us. But we ate it anyway.

We shared our hopes and dreams and disappointments around that table. We lived, loved and grew around that table. We laughed our way through the brown beans and cabbage. And recounted the day God had given us. Mother could sit at that table when we were young and kiss it and make it all better. And when we got older she would lay that gentle hand on your shoulder in good times or bad……and with a tender pat remind you that “everything” was still alright. That will make a house a home quicker than you can say “faith, hope and charity”. 

I reckon I won’t be back much anymore. There is no backlog now to stoke, no footsteps to creak the floor, no laughter rebounding down the hall. The silence seems so out of place, yet there is a peacefulness to it. Maybe I am leaving…..but I am not saying goodbye. None of us ever touched by those walls will ever tell it goodbye.

Blessed,

Kes