i've noticed that whenever my father's old house appears in my dreams, the layout and furniture are exactly the same as when we lived there, regardless of the time period being covered in a particular dream sequence. it's intriguing to me b/c i haven't lived in or set foot in that house since daddy died and the house was sold, but everything's the same. the blue couch formerly covered in plastic in the living room. the dining room table covered with papers b/c we almost never ate in the dining room. the kitchen with the double sinks and no dishwasher. the deep freezer on the enclosed back porch. my bedroom, which was directly across from the bathroom. the bathroom with a bathtub but no shower. daddy's bedroom, which was opposite the dining room. the basement where james & carol lived until they bought a place of their own, and where i joked about moving into after college graduation. the back yard that was primarily used by james & carol's dog. the garage where daddy or james would occasionally park their cars, but street parking wasn't really an issue except for when daddy's car got broken into. i think the thieves were more pissed than anything b/c there wasn't a fancy radio for them to steal, there weren't any valuables in the car, and daddy had put "the club" on the steering wheel, so they busted a window for nothing.
my mother died when i was 7. at the time, we were living in a 2-flat building - our unit was downstairs and our neighbor, whose name escapes me right now, lived upstairs. my memories of that layout are fuzzy, but i remember at least 3 bedrooms - one for me, one for my parents, and one for james. a dining room that we definitely used b/c the kitchen could barely hold all of us (especially while my oldest brother was still living at home). a living room. a bathroom. a back yard with a garden, maybe? yeah, sure, let's go with that.
we moved maybe a year or two after my mother's death.
that unit in that 2-flat building was a rental. my mother's best friend lived down the block in a house with a layout that still weirds me out to this day, even though i haven't been back in at least 25 years if not longer. i lived there briefly after my mother died and my family tried to figure out how the hell they were going to take care of a 7 year old girl when daddy and james both had to be at work at holy fuck it's early o'clock.
but then we bought the house. i say we like i had a say-so in the matter, but i don't remember even seeing the house until the deal was done and daddy was like, ta-da, here's our new house and here's your new room and new bedroom set, etc. i'm sure his girlfriend/longtime companion helped pick it out in the hopes that maybe she'd get asked to move in, but that didn't happen. instead, daddy married one of his former high school girlfriends, who was living in indiana and commuted to chicago on weekends until she found a job here. things didn't work - i think i was the only one of my siblings who liked her, and i wasn't even living there full-time. james couldn't stand her, she hated chicago, and one day while daddy & james were at work, she packed up all her shit and moved back to indiana. she wasn't missed and now i can trip people out when i refer to my ex-stepmother.
anyway... this morning, during a 6am "oh you have got to be kidding me there's no way i'm getting up right now b/c it's saturday for fuck's sake" talk with myself, i started wondering about daddy's motivation for buying that house. i never got to ask him about it. hell, it never even occurred to me to ask him about it back then. i'm sure some of it was making sure i had a better neighborhood to grow up in - we moved from 66th & marquette to 73rd right off of king drive, and even my young self could tell the difference. maybe he needed a new start after my mother died? was he fulfilling a promise he made to himself or to my mother or to the family as a whole that we'd have a house? i don't know, and i'm more or less ok with not knowing, but i wish i'd been cognizant enough to ask while i had the chance.
