Alarm and Breakthrough

Earlier this evening, I finally remembered to call my grandmother’s house to see if we could drop the girls with her and my mother Tuesday morning.  That’s when we have our next ultrasound.  I’d expected to see my mother Saturday, when we went to my niece’s birthday party at my brother’s house, but she was busy with one of her many activities.

My grandmother was all over it, not wanting to miss a chance to see the kids.  Then she let me know that just a little while before I called, my mother had been taken out on a stretcher and gone to the hospital.  Difficulty breathing.

Whoa!

I guess it’s the nonchalance of 91 years (in June) talking, but she didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, and we’ll know more tomorrow.  She assured me that if necessary she’ll get someone else to come help her on Tuesday, really not wanting to miss the opportunity.  After all, we could try my sister-in-law, my niece, bring the kids, or leave me home with the kids.  My mother and grandmother just happen to be tied for most convenient, crazy about seeing them (though surprised last time at just how “busy” Valerie was), and the object of tremendous enthusiasm on the part of the kids. 

It also works out well for some kid-free time afterward.  We went to lunch, went to the office to scan the ultrasound pictures, and generally didn’t hurry.  If we had to, we could hurry right back to get the kids from whoever.

Now I’m curious to learn what’s up with my mother.  Probably nothing.  On the other hand, speaking of nonchalance, she’s not one to call for an ambulance at the drop of a hat.  While she’s pretty healthy, she’s also 72.  Which is young for being in this family and female, but not young and spry in the traditional sense.

The timing is ironic in that I meant to post about something from Saturday to which she is central.  I made a personal breakthrough and gave Deb a great deal of insight.

In 1994, my mother somehow allowed her house to be foreclosed, under circumstances that remain mysterious to this day.  Nobody but her knew about it until the eviction notice arrived.  Being able to afford the mortgage was not an issue.  It was all very weird, and the woman you’d believe can’t keep anything secret managed to keep it mysterious.  She may have been crazy like a fox, letting go a place she could never afford to repair, but then the land alone was worth vastly more than she owed.  She could have invoked a sale herself and walked away with at least a year’s income in equity.

Despite my being the only one of five kids who never so much as spent a night there after moving out, I was probably the most attached to the property, and was traumatized all out of proportion.  My mother was, to me, my proxy in an ongoing war with the guy who developed a mobile home park surrounding us, and she surrendered.  Someone bought the place sight-unseen for 30k, more than she owed, and turned around and sold it to him for 50k, less than my mother could have gotten.

Subsequently the house was stripped of anything recyclable or salvagable and used as a fire department training exercise, then four new, especially deluxe mobile homes were put on the acre, finally completing the park, which first opened in 1972 and was complete, other than the conquest of our property, a few years later.

The last time I was ever there was the day my mother had to move, which was the very model of unpreparedness in the face of inexorability.  I had not even driven into other parts of the park, let alone by where the house used to be, before or after it was eliminated and the new units emplaced.  My brother got me a couple years ago by sending me a URL that was an aerial picture of that address as it is now, giving me an inescapable image of what was there now.  Once violated, I revisited it, because it was a good stepping off point for looking at the whole area.

Saturday I went home again.

We were right down the road, Valerie was sleeping and I wanted to take our time getting home, so I went that way, narrating about the Libby Estate, Richmond Park and the town well on the way, then turning into my old street, taking a right and looping around the outer perimeter, narrating some more, and where that street ends is almost directly across from where our driveway was.  I did it.  I went there, and I looked.  Then I took a right, pointed out where the sawmill had been, other buildings, the park office, which in another life my grandfather worked in, the big old tree my grandfather planted, smuggling it from Canada to remind him of home, where my father’s body shop had been, and at the dead end where you now have to walk to get to the bogs and swamp, turned around.  Then we took a right, down the road behind where our house had been, through what used to be a sandpit and a place where boards from the sawmill were stacked and other cool things could be found.  Then right, right on the main road of the park, pointed out the other house that was in the middle of the woods before the park was there, but on some bogs and not utterly surrounded, looped through the dog patch and back out through the main entrance.

The place has had an additional thirteen years of aging and looking old and permanent since I last was there.  The one consolation was that it was a nice mobile home park.  One of the nicest.  Four or five units per acre, for the town and the time, and to me, surrounded by about a square mile of woods and swamp (much of it remains, really), was absolute heresy.  Yet in a place like Fresno, that’s how they build houses.  It’s ironic that we have such expensive land here and the lots remain large, so to get maximum value relative to the land, you get McMansions.  The sad thing about the houses they’re building across from my grandmother is not that they are $450,000.  It’s that the land is $250,000 of it, which makes them not all that expensive for their giant size.

The trailers mobile homes were always decent; pretty big.  I’ve been in a lot of them.  If it came down to it, I’d live in one.

Where was I?  Big breakthrough.  Psychologically speaking, that is.  At the rate I was going, I thought I’d never go in there again.  At the same time, even though I hesitated to go by the location of the house, I’ve long wanted to find a way and a time to take the family through the still-wild part of the stomping grounds.  Or myself, anyway.

Deb was impressed.  One, with the park itself, and how nice it was.  Two, with the whole new insight into where and how I grew up, and why I look at an acre as a small piece of land.  I was able to tell more stories later and now it means something when I describe certain things.  I was telling her about Clark, the original owner of the land and my grandfather’s employer.  Then, appropriately, the fact that there’s a Clark Road exit off route 3 in Plymouth, named for the same guy, who also owned a big chunk of land there, came up today.

Anyway, before I digress anymore, hopefully my mother is okay and it’s just one of those precautionary scares.

Posted by on 04/22 at 10:57 PM

  1. I hope your mom will be ok.

    what a trip down memory lane it was reading your recollection of the house you grew up in. I remember visiting the house every thursday with groceries my mom bought for grammy and grampy.

    There was more than one tree brought back from Canada by the way… in addition to the one you described… there were two fur trees brought back that were about a foot tall (early 70’s I think) and two birch trees from Green Park (early to mid 80’s). The fur trees were in your front yard for years until grampy moved to an apartment. then they ended up in our front yard. They grew to be 30 or 40 feet high! Sadly, shortly after my mom passed, the trees had to be cut down (disease and over growth). The Birch trees were brought back shortly before grampy passed away and went straight to our back yard. Only one survived and is still there at my dad’s house.
    My mom was also sad hearing about the old house… it was the house she and your dad grew up in as well.

    Posted by  on  04/24  at  10:12 PM  from 
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