Some Other Woman.

I decided to bring my bicycle back from Washington. While there, I ride it around the park all of the time, and could see no reason not to continue doing that here. It has been a great decision.

The only downside is that I ride by my mother’s house.  There are orange and yellow marigolds in the planters. My mother hated yellow and orange. There is a dead plant in one of her pots. Mother would never allow that. The light isn’t on in the front room. It always used to be. And I can’t see Mother’s chair there anymore, or her bright white hair showing through the blinds.

But it’s only a house. Some Other Woman lives there now. Yesterday, while riding my bike, I saw her drive into the garage. My memories of my mother have nothing to do with her house, her stuff, the flowers she used to plant, and the condition of her flower beds. Those are only fleeting thoughts. They have to do with what we did together, how she showed that she cared about me, and the many memories, great and small. No things that I can touch, but things that I can feel.

Isn’t that the same legacy we will all leave behind someday?

So now this Other Woman in My Mother’s House is building her own memories with her own family in the house that my mother used to live in. I doubt if the yellow and orange flowers will be part of that.