They Left Us Everything

by Plum Johnson

  “If you lived in Florence you would think Haliburton was romantic!”

  I braced myself for her arguments. Mum was so powerful in the art of persuasion that I always acquiesced. This time I wanted to be the mother. I wanted to be with my daughter. I needed to find the courage to disappoint Mum—to put my needs and my daughter’s needs before hers.

  I drove out to Oakville and took the kimono out of the bag to show Mum. She looked wistful and stopped talking about Haliburton; she knew my mind was made up. She fingered the cream-coloured silk with its embroidered green leaves.

  “This is the trip I always wish I’d taken with you,” she said quietly. Then she rummaged in her desk and brought out a small blue cloth-bound book. “Did I ever show you this?” The title “Scribble Book” was gold-embossed on its cover. Inside its yellowing pages were pencil sketches she’d made of her trip to Italy in 1937.

  “Oh, Mum,” I said, “I didn’t know you’d gone to Florence when you were the same age as Jessica!”

  What happens to a woman’s dreams? Why hadn’t Mum and I ever gone painting together? I thought about all of Mum’s artwork that went up in the flames of Dad’s fireplace. It made me more determined than ever to grab this opportunity with Jessica. I didn’t want to be eighty-three looking back with regrets.

  “Promise you’ll call me every day!” said Mum. “Promise me!”

  A month later I’d packed my paints and brushes and was high in the sky with Alitalia, endlessly rehearsing the only two words in my Italian vocabulary: “Ca-poo-chee—no, pear-fah-vor-eh!”

  I turn now to Jessica.

  “Do you remember that summer I stayed with you in Florence?”

  “Of course!”

  “How come you don’t paint anymore?” After studying languages and then learning to paint in the classical style, Jessica returned home and got a degree in psychology. Now she works in the hospitality industry.

  She shrugs. “Because it doesn’t make me happy anymore. I’ve found something else that I enjoy doing.”

  “Wait a minute … you flew there by yourself … you chose the school … you stayed three years. You painted all those beautiful masterpieces.”

  “Maybe you should go to art school. Maybe you have an unfulfilled dream!”

  I’m stunned. Are all our unfulfilled dreams unconsciously passed down from mother to daughter for generations? Does it never end?

  A week later, my Other Mother Pat drives out to spend the day with me. I tell her I’ve been having dreams about Mum. Last night I dreamt my bedroom was missing its furniture. In its place was a miniature child, about the size of a paper clip. I picked her up and went looking for her family. I met Mum in the hallway and placed the child in the palm of her hand. I hurried to lock all the doors, but I was too late: in rushed a group of gypsy archaeologists. They were clutching valuable artifacts that they were excited to tell me they’d found in the basement, but when I looked closely, I could see they were holding only the old props I’d handmade as a child for my theatre. “How dare you trespass into our house!” I yelled. “This is not a museum! This is our HOME!” They wanted their daughter back, but I wouldn’t give her up until they returned our old furniture.

  “What a marvellous dream,” she says. “A real epic! You must be exhausted.”

  She tells me that in a dream, when someone is breaking into your house, it is to force you to confront something. She thinks the tiny child is me—representing the start of something, perhaps the new life I’m being given.

  “The problem is, dear, you’re still prepared to give her up for old furniture, for goodness’ sake!” she says. “You’re still trying to lock the door. Don’t you see? The furniture belongs in the past. The child is now.” Then she laughs. “Basements always represent the unconscious, our creative side, our deeper self. And you have a very deep unconscious!”

  Pat and I wander through the rooms. She’s astonished at how big the house is, how empty it feels, how much clutter is gone. I tell her it’s turned out to be harder than I ever imagined. I’ve felt like Alice Through the Looking Glass, going down so many rabbit holes.

  “I know how you feel, dear,” she says. “It’s why I decided to do the final edit myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After Geoff died, when I moved to the house where I am now, I was ruthless. I was eighty-one, you know. I gave away or threw away everything. I didn’t want to burden my children.” She giggles. “I even burned all my diaries!”

  “You burned your diaries?” I am aghast. “Why?”

  “They were private … full of personal feelings.”

  “But didn’t you think your children would want to know you in that intimate way after you’re gone?”

  “I didn’t think it was fair for others to read them.”

  “Don’t you wish you’d been able to read your own mother’s diary?”

  “Actually, I would …” says Pat, looking into the distance. “I regret it now.”

  Earlier I’d resolved to clear out my own mess, too, so my children wouldn’t have to face it, but since then I’ve had a change of heart. Now I believe this clearing out is a valuable process—best left to our children. It’s the only way they’ll ever truly come to know us, discovering things we never wanted them to find. I’m still hoping to find a diary of Mum’s. The only thing she ever showed me was her sketchbook.

  At least my dreams are changing. In my childhood dreams I always feared I was about to drown, overwhelmed by a threatening wave; now they’re about discovering how deep my creative powers are. I can see that Pat’s right: my dreams are about letting go. They’re telling me that the most valuable things come from within myself.

  But—if dreams are to be believed—I’m still trying to give myself back to my mother.

  Careful What You Wish For

  In late November I dial home, into my archived phone messages, clicking through until I find the one Mum left me a year ago, two months before she died. In a happy, heartfelt, enthusiastic tone, with her lilting Southern accent, I hear her sing “Hap-py birth-day, m’dah’lin’!” I listen to it over and over again. Then I burst into tears. I had wanted her to leave me alone, and two months later she did. Now I find myself looking up at the sky, searching for her.

  “Are you there, Mum?”

  Yes, darling, I’m right here.

  “What do you want me to do with all this stuff?”

  Whatever you want—they’re only things. Nothing lasts forever.

  I’m recognizing that this house is only the shell my mother and father left behind, but it represents their marriage, the life they built together, their frugality, and their generosity. It represents their personalities, too—the pairing of two opposites. When I look out at the lake—sometimes smooth as glass, sometimes gently waving, sometimes roiling with stormy whitecaps—the vista reflects their life together. Like the rocks and pebbles under the surface, their edges eventually fit together, rubbed smooth over time because beneath it all there was a commitment to stay together. This house still dances with that powerful energy, even though Mum and Dad have died. Its bones are soaked with the DNA of all who went before, in this wide-open setting, so attuned to nature. The house hums and rattles and whispers to me. I want to burrow back into it, reconsider my past, find the mother I once knew, reconnect our broken link. I want the house to help me. I want to bathe in the memories.

  Why can’t we keep it?

  On the other hand, why can’t I let go?

  Every time I drive in and out of the driveway, past the FOR SALE sign staked on the lawn, I’m reminded that we’re about to lose another member of our family—this house that we took for granted would forever be here as a backdrop to our lives. I worry that we’re saying goodbye to more than just a house. What will hold the family together after it’s gone?

  Victor was right about our first potential buyer: unable to secure financing, he has reluctantly withdrawn. I gave him his portrait. I didn’t feel right
about accepting any fee, so he made a donation in honour of Mum to Oomama, the charity that sponsors African grandmothers. Mum would have liked that. He tells me that our family and this house have had a profound effect on him, and that although he’s sad to have lost out, he believes everything happens for a reason. I still have coffee with him from time to time, whenever I find him sitting by the lake in the early mornings. We share a common bond now: both mourning the loss of this house. I’m glad I painted him sitting on the verandah steps, evidence of one last guest—a stranger—invited in. Mum would have liked that most of all.

  In December, The Globe and Mail runs a half-page feature of our house in their Homes section and we get a surprising hit. Alex has just called to say that a Mr. Baines has booked an appointment to see the house tomorrow. He saw the write-up and couldn’t believe it—this house once belonged to his grandfather! It was their summer cottage, affectionately named Summerholme.

  Only three families have lived in this house since it was built in the nineteenth century. The Baineses bought it in 1917 and sold it to Mum and Dad in 1952. I usually don’t hang around when Alex shows the house, but the next day I’m so excited that I’m cutting short my scheduled lunch to be here. I want to meet Mr. Baines. What are the chances that, while Mum and Dad’s descendants can’t find a way to hang on to this house, grandchildren of the previous owners might save it? My hopes are soaring. I race back to meet them as they arrive.

  Two generations spill out of their car: two middle-aged grandsons of the original owner with their wives, and a greatgrandson in his thirties, Robert, who’s never been inside the house before. In their arms they carry ancient oversized albums with black pages stuffed with photos held in by gummed corners. They run through the house, pointing things out to Robert, matching pictures to rooms. They can’t believe everything looks the same.

  I am mesmerized. The photos in their albums could have been taken of us. Black-and-white snapshots show their similarsized family assembled on the verandah, sitting in identical wicker armchairs, and gathered beside the beach-stone fireplace in the living room, just as we have done. In the corner of one photo, an old CCM bicycle like mine is thrown haphazardly on the lawn, lying on its side, looking like its wheels are still spinning. The garden bench is the same one Robin donated to the museum—I recognize its decorative iron base even though the wood slats have been replaced. A teepee is pitched in the garden—almost identical to the one we used to play in. It feels as if we’ve found a whole new branch of the family we never knew we had.

  Robert tells me his ancestors brought their furniture out from Toronto each spring and then packed it up in the fall, leaving the house empty all winter.

  “I always heard about a huge chest of drawers,” he says. “My grandfather said it was blue and had a magical secret drawer!”

  “Would you like to see it?” I ask him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s still here!”

  His eyes widen. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  I take him to the upstairs hall where the monster wardrobe sits. It’s got a gleaming mahogany veneer now. Dad removed the blue milk paint years ago, a “restoration” that, as it turned out, dramatically reduced its value. I slide out the middle bonnet drawer and show Robert the secret button inside that releases what appears to be a decorative rim above. He is agog.

  Downstairs, I show him a few Victorian pressback chairs with their worn leather seats that also came with the house. Sadly, the others have broken and the matching table has gone with Chris to B.C., but there are so many other things to see. His father tells me that the room we always called our playroom was originally designed for a pool table, and now the low-hanging brass light fixtures we found in a cupboard make sense. We pore over the photos and talk for hours, promising to keep in touch. It’s obvious they didn’t come to buy, merely to take a trip down memory lane, but the house is speaking again and Mum would have loved this encounter.

  Early the next morning I awake to find my body aligned to the Earth’s magnetic pole, as if my head has been pulled due north. I’m not a practitioner of feng shui, but just for fun I check my Ming Gua number and find that it’s six: metal. This tells me that if I sleep facing north, the influence is separation. Could my body be telling me something—that separation is what I need right now?

  I see another beautiful sunrise accumulating across the horizon. It is so dramatic. In the west, a horizontal wedge of deep indigo is sandwiched between a deep splotch of apricot, which is feathering into the opaque, milky white of the lake below. The tiny pinholes of electric light along Burlington Bay cut through the ink. I run to my paints, but even as I open the lid I know I might be too late to capture the changing light. I plunge my brush into a mixture of aquamarine and raw umber and let it flow onto the only blank card I can find: the backside of one of my Romeo and Juliet prints. I’ve just had them printed for Christmas cards, but I don’t care. I have to sacrifice one to this scene. I scrumble and scratch and lay orange on thick and then wipe it with a dishcloth. Within minutes the inky blackness is dissolving into puffs of smoke, the water is changing to slate grey, and the apricot is fading to shell pink.

  Will I ever get used to the beauty of early mornings here? The optimism of the rising sun shoots through my veins like adrenalin. A lone duck has appeared on the surface, serenely bobbing on the waves near shore. Another joins in, washing its feathers nearby. Our Canadian flag has woken up, flapping sleepily. It was a formless black line half an hour ago; now it looks russet and its maple leaf becomes clear.

  I have unlocked the verandah door. Even though the thermometer outside the kitchen window reads only forty degrees Fahrenheit—just above freezing—it doesn’t feel cold; it feels fresh. The sun has popped up over the horizon, directly across from the door, and shines a searchlight onto my face. All the living-room furniture is backlit, outlined by a halo of orange, as if I’m at Stonehenge during the winter solstice, on a pilgrimage of healing, worshipping the recently deceased.

  Joggers run by, laughing, their running shoes crunching on the gravel path. The geese honk, but no birds are singing. They should have all flown south by now, but I’ve learned that the swallows stay here. A woman walks by briskly in a long coat, hurried along by her golden Labrador.

  Now the clouds have parted, as if the sun has swept them aside. They fan out in brilliant white plumes, leaving behind streaks of lavender and robin’s egg blue. It looks like one of those holy paintings on the ceiling frescoes in Florence.

  I need a last hurrah. Maybe I should make Mum’s famous eggnog this December?

  Once we moved to Canada, Mum could never attend her own family’s massive annual Christmas Eve party in Virginia, so she attempted to replicate it at Point O’ View. Instead of hordes of cousins, Mum invited everyone she met to our Christmas parties, and sometimes more than two hundred people crammed into the downstairs rooms. One year, a guest even rode in on his horse. Carols were sung around the piano in the playroom, food was laid out in the dining room, and halfway through the evening Dad turned off all the lights and marched through the rooms like the Pied Piper, carrying aloft a platter of flaming raisins that he’d soaked in brandy and lit with a match. He lowered it for the children so they could see the flickering gas-blue flames up close. He urged them to put their hands in to grab a few. It was the only kind of flame that didn’t burn you, he said.

  Mum would bring down Granny’s music box—the antique automaton that she kept wrapped in a sheet and stored throughout the year in a special cupboard upstairs. She set it on a low table so that visiting children could turn the crank and watch the figures come to life to the tune of the old German carol “O du fröhliche.” I suspect the music box has lasted because it was only ever cranked each Christmas—a total of about 133 days since 1878—and also because the old linen sheet Mum wrapped it in was probably as organic and acid-free as the Shroud of Turin.

  But the pièce de résistance was Mum’s eggnog. Using her fa
mily’s bourbon-laced recipe, she served it up in Granny’s silver punch bowl. It predated Peg Bracken’s recipes by about a hundred years, but it followed her ideology: as long as it got stirred once a day, you could continue serving it until the dog walked away. The recipe required staggering quantities of rum, bourbon, scotch, and sherry, and Mum delegated the making of it to me. We began fermenting it in late October. By Christmas, it was lethal. Mum served it to adults in tiny juice glasses; more than two and they’d have to spend the night.

  I carry the old five-gallon stone crock into Dad’s workroom and start cracking the three dozen eggs. I mix in the sugar and skim milk and dribble the quarts of mixed liquors in a slow, steady stream, stirring all the while with the long-handled wooden spoon until my arm aches, just as it did in childhood. I cover the crock with a heavy board and make a note to stir it once a day until Christmas. Dad’s workroom is cold, so the eggnog will safely do its lethal fermenting, just as it always has.

  My plan of spending six weeks here has stretched into a year. For the first time in my life I’m free to have Christmas in my own house in Toronto, but I’m still feeling tugged in two different directions, wanting to be there with my children but unable to let go of the tradition of being here. Nobody else in the family feels this way, it seems. My brothers have long since raised anchor.

  Victor is excited to tell me that he’s found a friend who’ll house-sit Point O’ View for a few days so that I can have Christmas at my own house, as I’ve always told him I wanted. In his mind, he’s giving me the ultimate Christmas present. As I drive into the city with a thermos of eggnog tucked in the back seat, I think how strange it feels, leaving Mum’s house just before Christmas, still having to hit the road, only this time driving in the opposite direction.

  This time last year, I was helping Mum wrap her presents and decorating her house. In previous years she had always directed me—“Why don’t you put the angels up there”—but last year she’d just dismissed them with a wave of her hand: “I don’t care where you put the damn things.” I watched her sit on the guest bed, picking through her bags of junk, trying to decide who would get what. She handed me pieces of old gift wrap—folded and reused so many times they felt like soft suede—and strips of ribbon that were wrinkled and frayed. When Dad was alive, he used to iron them.