“Would you like to sign up for a tour?” Mikah asked in all seriousness with a hopeful smile on her face. She had politely interrupted the always ongoing conversation between her mother and me. She held a notepad and pen in hand. All that was needed to take a guided tour through my home was my name, my phone number, and the time I was requesting. Of course, that specific time wasn’t avahilable because she had a previous appointment, but she could take me at 1:35 instead (five minutes later) if that worked for me.

With a loop of long-ago discarded keys in hand, she led me (and her mother, my niece) from room to room, stepping over her 3-year-old brother playing with the floor-size alphabet puzzle, around Jeff and the dog in a ferocious game of tug of war. After completing the circle of bedroom and bathroom and office as she pointed out highlights of the 'community', we ended up in the kitchen where she presented with an open arm "…the cookie making counter; suitable for making Christmas cookies and Hanukah cookies and well, really any holiday cookies…”

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"This is the longest goodbye…" Nancy said, and I think I agree. It is a perfect fall day here on Shady Lane. The sun is low, light filtering through my cousin Jack's oak leaves. The air stirs with a soft breeze, and the American flag in its stars and stripes glory sways from its perch on the front porch. We haven't covered the pool this year, so the water still ripples that perfect shade of 1950s blue. And I am still here camping out in my mother's house.

It is under contract. We have agreed on a short list of repairs. The movers come this week to pack up Nancy's furniture, with its own pedigree of family history; the Tanner pie safe and the turn-of-the-century white kitchen cabinet with red enamel trim (both of them refinished painstakingly by Daddy), Mama Cunningham's iron bed, the vintage formica kitchen table picked up from the side of the road, and oh shoot, we still haven't gone through those last two photo albums we just discovered – both from the 1940s, Daddy in France, Momma in nurses training at Greenville General Hospital and then stationed in Mississippi. At that point in time, they were on very different trajectories. It would be 10 years before their paths crossed again.

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There she was. Sashaying down the aisle to the right of where I sat in my pew at church; petite and blond, black skirt short, sweater formfitting. Knee-high black boots, a beret perched at a jaunty angle on her head. A kindred spirit. We had not met, but I knew that I knew her well. I was in my early 40s, she must have been in her early 60s, yet she moved with the energy of a woman in her 30s. Poised, confident, strong. My introduction to Joan Christopher Quillen from afar. I knew, the moment I saw her we would become dear friends.

I don’t remember when we actually met. I just know I was drawn to her like a bear to honey, and she to me. Our spirits aligned. Our values were perfectly in sync. I was her biggest fan, and she mine.

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It is a spring morning. The earth has washed itself clean after two days of steady rain. The grass is greener. The limbs of the white oaks stretch overhead black against the mist of the morning heavens. A dog beside me on the window seat grows impatient for me to fix her breakfast, but my coffee is hot, and I want to enjoy the quiet entrance of the day just a little bit longer.

These days are numbered. The house that has always been home for me will soon have a sign in the front yard. Papers from our meeting with the realtor are still spread across the table, waiting to be read closely and signed. My to-do list this week includes ‘call the lawyer’ along with ‘finish painting the baseboards’ and ‘clear out the garage’. This is a season of change. A season that started almost a year ago and is accelerating.

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Sometimes thoughts line up together like hand in glove; each finger, each thought fitting perfectly, sliding easily into its rightful place. I am reading these mornings in Deuteronomy. The forty years are over, the grumbling almost quietened, the land of the promise visible from the highest hill just on the other side of the river Jordan. Joshua has been chosen. Moses has not. And so, Moses has his last words to the children of the people he started this journey with; the ones who embraced fear and cowardness at the first mention of giants in the land of Canaan. That land flowing with milk and honey.

Because of their refusal to trust God, they have been wandering in the wilderness for forty years; one year for each of the forty days the spies had explored the land God had promised to give them. Only their children would inherit that land. But with their inheritance came a book of instructions. Thousands of years later, on the other side of the world, we can't begin to understand how much these laws and decrees have influenced our government, our country, our lives, and our thoughts about what is right and what is wrong.

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It is one of those phone calls you never want to receive. You can’t take in the words. You think for just a moment if you hadn’t answered the phone, it would all go away, disappear, never have happened.

Terrible accident. The names listed out. Gone. No going back. The white caskets will line up in the church. You will all wait forever and ever to gather graveside because it takes longer than expected to bury so many at one time. And afterward an emptiness, a fear, a "how could this happen?" that never is answered. My fear of large trucks on interstates; watching the grassy area of the median to make sure they don't cross over without warning into my lane. The irrational thoughts while packing the car for a trip - wondering if we never return, is the house cleaned up enough if my family has to turn the key in the lock and come in to disassemble my life?

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We say we are taking Maybelle for a walk, but I think mostly we are taking one for ourselves. This week we walk the roads of my childhood and the ones that did not yet exist then.

We walk past where the Fisher's long straight driveway started and if we go farther down Fisher Road and turn left and then left again past houses on two-acre lots until the neighborhood road dead ends just past the house with the tennis court, we can look up into the enormous oak trees where the small white wood frame farmhouse of the Fisher’s once stood. It was surrounded by pastures and fields with a creek running through the woods where children waded, and sunlight broke through the canopy like glittering diamonds.

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Transformation. That is where I have lived this summer. It has been in the broken tile and concrete dust of tearing out my mother’s 1950’s burgundy and pink bathroom to redress it in shades of white and veins of gray. White travertine luxury vinyl tile (who knew there was such a thing?), ubiquitous white shiplap walls, and the easily installed cabinetry of Ikea.

We met a lovely French plumber named Jean Marie from Corsica who made crumbling pipes sound almost wonderous. Our dog Maybelle was enamored, and we soon discovered if we missed her, she could be found sitting in the bathroom with him, his hand absentmindedly rubbing her head.

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I am slowly dismantling my mother’s life. Last week it was the pink and burgundy tile of her bathroom. This week as the plumbers move the hookups for the toilet and the sink, I scale the built-in pine bookcases she designed to fill the entire wall in the living room in 1954 as the carpenter stood by waiting for her pencil sketch. There are books in the high nooks with cloth covers and faded titles no one has reached for in years.

I always knew this would be the hard part. When she fell in my backyard from a stroke, hitting her head on the terracotta planter on her way down, and promptly died 36 hours later, I sort of took that in stride. She had lived a full and vibrant life and had told me that last week she was lonely. “I want to go home” were her last words. My sisters and I met with the mortician in Greer, planned her service with her great nephew officiating, talked with the relatives who gathered, and I wrote a poem about not missing her enough knowing the missing her part would come later.

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“I tell this story, not because I am good, but because He is good.” Susan's voice is soft and soothing – as it always is. There are seven of us gathered on the screened-in porch; cousins who share the bloodlines and upbringing of Robert and Pauline, Doris and Helen. We gather once a year to share our food, our time, our stories. We once lived over the hill and down the road from one another – now time and distance and our own families have strewn us across the southern states.

Susan had gone to the grocery store after church on Sunday. As she waited in line to pay, a woman about her age and a young boy waited beside her. Joy spilled out of them and drew Susan’s attention. She smiled back at the little boy who proudly announced to her, “I got to ring the bell today!”

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My thoughts skip back to a distant time in my own young life. The sun is bright white light shining outside the open window. The white curtains blow into the room and float back in release. The sounds of ocean waves breaking against the shore are the constant - pierced by cries of seagulls. I am alone. It must be after lunch. Naptime.

I know outside the window play my older sisters, Ann and Kathy. My daddy is out there too. My mother is somewhere in the house with me. It is the end of an era. Perhaps 1959 or 60. When you drove to Florida and your daddy found a white-framed house right on the beach. The ocean breeze came through the windows and golden sand was outside your doorstep.

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I know my mother’s sixth great-grandmother was in Chester County, Pennsylvania at the time the words were written - because somewhere there are letters, acknowledging her gifts of financial assistance for supplies for the militia. She was recently widowed, her husband’s Last Will and Testament not yet filed. It could wait. She probably had her hands full trying to keep the farm running. I am not sure if Daddy’s family had yet made it to Virginia. These are the smallest echoes of a bloodline traced back across the miles and the years unknown.

What I do know is there was never any doubt in our home as I grew up - two hundred years later - that this was a sacred nation which my family had been honored and willing to serve - by picking up arms and laying down their lives. Every generation wore a uniform and went where they were needed. I have always known that I have gotten off far too easy; because others did the hard things.

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