Thank God for Chinese

by Terry J. Ward

I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't already know.

Making a home. Home - making. A highly under-rated talent. But what does it mean? I think I got a refresher this past week. Last week I had to go out of town for some training for my job (that's a whole other story!). In the course of doing the mom thing, I called home to see how things were going. Now, mind you, I'm not stupid, I did not clean anything before I left. I've come home from business trips before - I know what my house looks like at that point. My son, Pat, answered the phone, which surprised me a bit because I had left him at my mother's to be spoiled beyond recognition while I was gone. So, asking the question, "what are you doing home?" I find out that my son, Andy, and his girlfriend, Katie, had come home from Denver the night before.

You have to understand what this means precisely. For the past three years, we've seen Andy once a year, at Christmas. End of story. To have him show up unexpectedly on my doorstep - with HIS GIRLFRIEND - was a major family event. And what a doorstep he showed up on. Two teen-aged sons, one husband, home alone, for three days - you figure it out. I mean this girlfriend could possibly be THE GIRLFRIEND. And let's not forget, I'm still nurturing in the back of my mind ideas on how I can get Andy to move back closer to home. The image of home that I have carefully built and sustained while Andy has been away (let's face it, I have to make it seem better than when he lived here, otherwise I'd have no ammo at all!), was brought to a swift and crashing reality.

Let us just say that when I arrived home Friday evening, my son Mike had chosen that time to completely haul out his bedroom. In other words, everything of his (including the dirty clothes that he had piled on the dining room table for the past week), except his speakers and CD player, was artfully arranged in my dining room. The living room had been turned into a quasi-barracks, complete with my son, Pat's friend, Devon, who seemed to find the leisurely ambience quite amenable, and I no longer had a kitchen counter or table (I did eventually find these.). I'm still wondering how to reclaim my study.

Now, since the gradual defection of my sons for greener pastures, I have been quietly fostering this bourgeois desire to have a nice house. I probably shouldn't share such a decadent desire with strangers, but I have been carefully plotting how to have matching carpet throughout my house. Call me frivolous. I don't care. You have to understand, for years my mother said that I reminded her of Ma Kettle (If you don't know, you'll have to ask someone with a fondness for AMC.) Now, I'm OK with that, because I happen to think that Marjorie Main was a great lady. But she does somehow clash with the words Gracious Living. Enter Andy and his girlfriend.

Here's the part where I'm going to tell you what you already know. Gracious Living didn't matter. When that kid gave me a great big old hug, what mattered was that he was home. We were all together. I ordered Chinese and cleared the living room for a picnic. And we were happy. We were a family. Amongst the rubble, we laughed and hugged and picked on each other. And in the end, it didn't matter that Mike's couch, tipped on its end, was standing guard over us like a surreal statue, and it didn't matter that the various rugs in the house were older than my kids. It was home. The one that Andy really remembers.