Dream House
Once there was an old woman who dreamed of living in a big, beautiful clean house, but the house she lived in was small, drab, and dirty. There were cobwebs hanging from the ceilings and lamps, dust on the bric a brac, grimy fingerprints on the kitchen cabinets and boxes and stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes staggered haphazardly throughout the house wherever there was wall or floor space. It was difficult for the old woman to move about in her own home what with the boxes and the two cats usually sprawled in the doorways between rooms. The odd thing was that she herself had always been a clean and tidy person, but the people she had lived with were, to put it bluntly, untidy slobs.
She had lived quite a merry life with her sloppy husband and three messy children who had never shared her dream of a big, clean, beautiful house, so they had made messes that they intended to clean up, but never quite got around to. They accumulated possessions that they could not bring themselves to part with. The walls of the children's bedrooms were papered still with souvenirs of the Mystery Spot and posters of favorite movie stars held up by yellowed scotch tape. The corners of the bedrooms were piled high with boxes of junk and memorabilia that they had intended, but never quite managed to bring into the big, clean, beautiful houses they purchased when they married.
Then the woman's husband fell ill. She nursed him for months, but he just got sicker and sicker. One day, he started to fall and she tried to catch him. She hurt her back so badly that she couldn't care for him any longer. He had to be put in a nursing home, and he died soon after, leaving the old woman alone in a cramped and dirty house without the strength to clean it. She missed her husband very much.
The old woman got a couple of cats for company and life went on. She began to work at cleaning up the big messes a little at a time. She had always cleaned as she went, but there was just so much accumulated junk and her back was still so sore, that often it was just too much for her. Still she dreamed her dream of the big, clean, beautiful house and prayed that she might have it and live in it for many years until she died, but even though her dream seemed hopeless, she still bought a lottery ticket once a week.
Then one day, one of the old woman's daughters came to the house.
"My husband beats me, mother. I don't want to live with him anymore. May I stay with you?" asked the daughter.
"Yes, of course," said the mother. She loved her daughter very much, but inside, she sighed, for this had been the messiest child of all.
The daughter was a baker. She worked very hard at her job all day long and came home covered with flour. She would eat dinner, collapse on the couch and fall asleep in front of the TV. She was much too tired to lift a finger around the house, but she left her dirty dishes in her mother's sink every night, and she left her dirty clothes in the hamper every morning, and every evening when she came home, there were clean dishes in the cupboard to eat dinner off of, and every morning she had clean clothes to wear. The daughter paid her mother rent as regular as clockwork, but the daughter had an acquisitive streak and was always buying gadgets or gimcracks at garage sales on her days off, and everyday the old woman could see her house growing even smaller and messier, everyday less and less the big, beautiful house of her dreams.
And one morning, the old woman woke up, made her way up the hallway to the kitchen and looked at the mess her house had become.
"It's ugly," she said. "It's ugly." She began to cry.
Her daughter woke that morning to a silent house. She was singing like a bird herself, when she saw her mother sitting in the easy chair with a quilt tucked around her. The cats were milling around and the daughter paused in the middle of her song and was startled to see that her mother's face was wet with tears.
"What's the matter, mother?" asked the daughter. "Are you ill?"
The mother opened her eyes and said, "It's ugly." Then she sighed and repeated, "It's ugly." Then she closed her eyes on tears.
The daughter had a sinking feeling. The song was dead on her lips. She went to the kitchen sink. It was full of dirty dishes and pots and pans. She went to the laundry room. There were no clean clothes for her to wear to work. The cats were mewing and bumping her legs. She walked back to the living room. Her mother sat silently rocking in her easy chair with a wet trail of tears on her cheek and the daughter looked around the house as if seeing it for the first time through her mother's eyes. It was cramped and shabby. She felt a twinge of shame. She looked at her mother and saw how old and frail she had become. The daughter looked at the various messes, the cups, pans, and dishes in the sink, the books and magazines stacked haphazardly, the projects started and abandoned unfinished, the clothes piled on the floor by the washer and she recognized that the mess was not her mother's mess. It was her own. A bitter feeling of shame flooded over her, a feeling of self-disgust so strong that she called in sick and started in doing chores with a degree of commitment that she had never felt before.
She fed the cats, prepared a meal for her mother, washed and dried dishes and laundry, and cleaned and tidied as best she could and fixed another meal for her mother who sat wrapped in the blanket almost all day and rocked in her easy chair and never said a word. Then the daughter cooked dinner and brought fresh flowers and put them on the table by her mother's chair.
"I cooked spaghetti, mother."
The mother looked at the plate and nodded, but she didn't say a word.
The next day, the daughter went to work and when she came home, she found her mother sitting like the day before and the spaghetti dishes from the night before were still in the sink with the pots and pans and the cats were milling around hungry and the daughter said, "Mother, are you feeling better?"
The mother said nothing. The girl got busy and washed the dishes and cooked a dinner of soup and sandwiches, picked a flower outside, put it in a jelly glass and served her mother dinner on a tray and even cleaned up the dirty dishes afterwards, but the mother didn't say one word.
So the girl kept busy that evening and made the beds and fed the cats and carried out two big bundles of newspapers and magazines for recycling. She cleaned out one of the kitchen junk drawers while her mother sat in the rocking chair and worked crossword puzzles and said not one word to her.
The next day, when the girl came home from work, it seemed to her that her mother was beginning to feel better, though she never even looked at her daughter once, and the daughter cooked the dinner and washed the dishes and swept the floor and even washed it. While she was washing the floor, she noticed that the walls and widows were thick with grease and she determined that that was what she would work on the next day, and she did.
Two days later, after her regular chores were done, she cleaned out under the sink and threw out old slivers of soap bars and jars of grease and she had a thought that the kitchen would be a lot roomier if they could get rid of pots and pans and utensils that they never used.
"So, how are you today, mama?" asked the daughter. Her mother answered not a word but only smiled over a book she was reading and had a sip of tea.
"Well, is it OK if I box up some of the junk we never use and donate it to charity?" The mother nodded her head once and the daughter determined then and there to work harder than ever on the house the next day.
She stopped off at the hardware store after work and brought home a can of paint and some brushes with her.
"I got a compliment at work today, mother," said the girl. "The boss told me she thought I was better organized. I'm going to get a raise."
"Hmmm," said her mother, but whether she was mulling over an article in the newspaper or acknowledging her comment, the girl couldn't tell for sure, but somehow she felt if she could just get the house clean enough and tidy enough, her mother would forgive her and talk to her again, so the daughter dressed in old clothes, spread newspapers on the kitchen floor, and began to paint. By 10 PM, she had finished the painting, and what an improvement it was to see the finger marks and grease stains gone. She was proud of the way the kitchen looked now, so airy and roomy.
"It looks wonderful!" said the daughter to herself, "almost like a picture in a magazine."
The mother murmured from the rocking chair. She was sitting with both cats in her lap, the cats rumbling with contented purrs.
The next day when the daughter came home from work, she looked at her mother. The mother was dressed in new clothes, and the daughter could not help noticing how much younger and stronger her mother looked.
The girl noticed that her mother had made other changes during the day as well. Her mother had washed some of her bakery work clothes and placed them folded on the end of her bed.
"Thank you, Mother," said the girl, but still the mother was silent and the daughter went directly to the bathroom and started in laying a new tile floor, and every day for weeks, the girl worked on the house.
Months had passed since that day of shame when she first saw the house through her mother's eyes, and every day, the daughter worked on changing her untidy bad habits trying to make the house clean and at least, not ugly.
One day when she came home from work, she walked through the back yard. It was mid-summer and the lawn was freshly mowed. The petunias and geraniums bloomed cheerfully in terra cotta pots. The garden looked very lovely. When she opened the front door, she saw the spacious living room and the newly vacuumed blue rug. A few books and knick-knacks stood neat on their shelves. The kitchen was clean and neatly organized, but homey too, with houseplants ranged on the window over the sink. The spices were lined up in a large rack in alphabetical order and the pots and pans rested neat on their hooks. The whole house looked bigger, somehow. It was also clean, and so much care had been given it, that it actually looked beautiful.
The girl's mother pirouetted into the kitchen with a happy smile on her face. She twirled and twirled like a little girl and cried out, "Wheeeeeeee! Yippee!"
"Are you all right, Mother?" asked the daughter.
"All right?" said the mother. "I feel terrific! I live in a big, clean beautiful house. It's my dream come true!" Then she looked her daughter right in the eyes and smiled and said, "Let's keep it this way!"
The daughter smiled back warmly, hugged her mother and whispered, "It's a deal, mama."
And they did and they lived happily together in the big, clean, beautiful house for many, many years after that.
Once there was an old woman who dreamed of living in a big, beautiful clean house, but the house she lived in was small, drab, and dirty. There were cobwebs hanging from the ceilings and lamps, dust on the bric a brac, grimy fingerprints on the kitchen cabinets and boxes and stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes staggered haphazardly throughout the house wherever there was wall or floor space. It was difficult for the old woman to move about in her own home what with the boxes and the two cats usually sprawled in the doorways between rooms. The odd thing was that she herself had always been a clean and tidy person, but the people she had lived with were, to put it bluntly, untidy slobs.
She had lived quite a merry life with her sloppy husband and three messy children who had never shared her dream of a big, clean, beautiful house, so they had made messes that they intended to clean up, but never quite got around to. They accumulated possessions that they could not bring themselves to part with. The walls of the children's bedrooms were papered still with souvenirs of the Mystery Spot and posters of favorite movie stars held up by yellowed scotch tape. The corners of the bedrooms were piled high with boxes of junk and memorabilia that they had intended, but never quite managed to bring into the big, clean, beautiful houses they purchased when they married.
Then the woman's husband fell ill. She nursed him for months, but he just got sicker and sicker. One day, he started to fall and she tried to catch him. She hurt her back so badly that she couldn't care for him any longer. He had to be put in a nursing home, and he died soon after, leaving the old woman alone in a cramped and dirty house without the strength to clean it. She missed her husband very much.
The old woman got a couple of cats for company and life went on. She began to work at cleaning up the big messes a little at a time. She had always cleaned as she went, but there was just so much accumulated junk and her back was still so sore, that often it was just too much for her. Still she dreamed her dream of the big, clean, beautiful house and prayed that she might have it and live in it for many years until she died, but even though her dream seemed hopeless, she still bought a lottery ticket once a week.
Then one day, one of the old woman's daughters came to the house.
"My husband beats me, mother. I don't want to live with him anymore. May I stay with you?" asked the daughter.
"Yes, of course," said the mother. She loved her daughter very much, but inside, she sighed, for this had been the messiest child of all.
The daughter was a baker. She worked very hard at her job all day long and came home covered with flour. She would eat dinner, collapse on the couch and fall asleep in front of the TV. She was much too tired to lift a finger around the house, but she left her dirty dishes in her mother's sink every night, and she left her dirty clothes in the hamper every morning, and every evening when she came home, there were clean dishes in the cupboard to eat dinner off of, and every morning she had clean clothes to wear. The daughter paid her mother rent as regular as clockwork, but the daughter had an acquisitive streak and was always buying gadgets or gimcracks at garage sales on her days off, and everyday the old woman could see her house growing even smaller and messier, everyday less and less the big, beautiful house of her dreams.
And one morning, the old woman woke up, made her way up the hallway to the kitchen and looked at the mess her house had become.
"It's ugly," she said. "It's ugly." She began to cry.
Her daughter woke that morning to a silent house. She was singing like a bird herself, when she saw her mother sitting in the easy chair with a quilt tucked around her. The cats were milling around and the daughter paused in the middle of her song and was startled to see that her mother's face was wet with tears.
"What's the matter, mother?" asked the daughter. "Are you ill?"
The mother opened her eyes and said, "It's ugly." Then she sighed and repeated, "It's ugly." Then she closed her eyes on tears.
The daughter had a sinking feeling. The song was dead on her lips. She went to the kitchen sink. It was full of dirty dishes and pots and pans. She went to the laundry room. There were no clean clothes for her to wear to work. The cats were mewing and bumping her legs. She walked back to the living room. Her mother sat silently rocking in her easy chair with a wet trail of tears on her cheek and the daughter looked around the house as if seeing it for the first time through her mother's eyes. It was cramped and shabby. She felt a twinge of shame. She looked at her mother and saw how old and frail she had become. The daughter looked at the various messes, the cups, pans, and dishes in the sink, the books and magazines stacked haphazardly, the projects started and abandoned unfinished, the clothes piled on the floor by the washer and she recognized that the mess was not her mother's mess. It was her own. A bitter feeling of shame flooded over her, a feeling of self-disgust so strong that she called in sick and started in doing chores with a degree of commitment that she had never felt before.
She fed the cats, prepared a meal for her mother, washed and dried dishes and laundry, and cleaned and tidied as best she could and fixed another meal for her mother who sat wrapped in the blanket almost all day and rocked in her easy chair and never said a word. Then the daughter cooked dinner and brought fresh flowers and put them on the table by her mother's chair.
"I cooked spaghetti, mother."
The mother looked at the plate and nodded, but she didn't say a word.
The next day, the daughter went to work and when she came home, she found her mother sitting like the day before and the spaghetti dishes from the night before were still in the sink with the pots and pans and the cats were milling around hungry and the daughter said, "Mother, are you feeling better?"
The mother said nothing. The girl got busy and washed the dishes and cooked a dinner of soup and sandwiches, picked a flower outside, put it in a jelly glass and served her mother dinner on a tray and even cleaned up the dirty dishes afterwards, but the mother didn't say one word.
So the girl kept busy that evening and made the beds and fed the cats and carried out two big bundles of newspapers and magazines for recycling. She cleaned out one of the kitchen junk drawers while her mother sat in the rocking chair and worked crossword puzzles and said not one word to her.
The next day, when the girl came home from work, it seemed to her that her mother was beginning to feel better, though she never even looked at her daughter once, and the daughter cooked the dinner and washed the dishes and swept the floor and even washed it. While she was washing the floor, she noticed that the walls and widows were thick with grease and she determined that that was what she would work on the next day, and she did.
Two days later, after her regular chores were done, she cleaned out under the sink and threw out old slivers of soap bars and jars of grease and she had a thought that the kitchen would be a lot roomier if they could get rid of pots and pans and utensils that they never used.
"So, how are you today, mama?" asked the daughter. Her mother answered not a word but only smiled over a book she was reading and had a sip of tea.
"Well, is it OK if I box up some of the junk we never use and donate it to charity?" The mother nodded her head once and the daughter determined then and there to work harder than ever on the house the next day.
She stopped off at the hardware store after work and brought home a can of paint and some brushes with her.
"I got a compliment at work today, mother," said the girl. "The boss told me she thought I was better organized. I'm going to get a raise."
"Hmmm," said her mother, but whether she was mulling over an article in the newspaper or acknowledging her comment, the girl couldn't tell for sure, but somehow she felt if she could just get the house clean enough and tidy enough, her mother would forgive her and talk to her again, so the daughter dressed in old clothes, spread newspapers on the kitchen floor, and began to paint. By 10 PM, she had finished the painting, and what an improvement it was to see the finger marks and grease stains gone. She was proud of the way the kitchen looked now, so airy and roomy.
"It looks wonderful!" said the daughter to herself, "almost like a picture in a magazine."
The mother murmured from the rocking chair. She was sitting with both cats in her lap, the cats rumbling with contented purrs.
The next day when the daughter came home from work, she looked at her mother. The mother was dressed in new clothes, and the daughter could not help noticing how much younger and stronger her mother looked.
The girl noticed that her mother had made other changes during the day as well. Her mother had washed some of her bakery work clothes and placed them folded on the end of her bed.
"Thank you, Mother," said the girl, but still the mother was silent and the daughter went directly to the bathroom and started in laying a new tile floor, and every day for weeks, the girl worked on the house.
Months had passed since that day of shame when she first saw the house through her mother's eyes, and every day, the daughter worked on changing her untidy bad habits trying to make the house clean and at least, not ugly.
One day when she came home from work, she walked through the back yard. It was mid-summer and the lawn was freshly mowed. The petunias and geraniums bloomed cheerfully in terra cotta pots. The garden looked very lovely. When she opened the front door, she saw the spacious living room and the newly vacuumed blue rug. A few books and knick-knacks stood neat on their shelves. The kitchen was clean and neatly organized, but homey too, with houseplants ranged on the window over the sink. The spices were lined up in a large rack in alphabetical order and the pots and pans rested neat on their hooks. The whole house looked bigger, somehow. It was also clean, and so much care had been given it, that it actually looked beautiful.
The girl's mother pirouetted into the kitchen with a happy smile on her face. She twirled and twirled like a little girl and cried out, "Wheeeeeeee! Yippee!"
"Are you all right, Mother?" asked the daughter.
"All right?" said the mother. "I feel terrific! I live in a big, clean beautiful house. It's my dream come true!" Then she looked her daughter right in the eyes and smiled and said, "Let's keep it this way!"
The daughter smiled back warmly, hugged her mother and whispered, "It's a deal, mama."
And they did and they lived happily together in the big, clean, beautiful house for many, many years after that.