Chapter 4: ... The Home I Always Had

August 4, 1980

They kept me in the hospital for two more days. I did a lot of thinking, a lot of walking (preferably with Nurse Sandra), watched some TV, ate more iffy hospital food, and tried to get my head around things. The only real conclusion was that, until I saw more of how things played out, there was too much uncertainty to draw any conclusions. My parents were a bit unhappy that I had to miss church, but I wasn’t ready Sunday morning. By late that afternoon, they decided my brainwaves didn’t look as worrisome and I could go home Monday.

Dad was back to work. His manager was understanding when it was life and death, but neither they, nor Dad’s own work ethic, would permit unscheduled days off when things were OK. Dad was a borderline workaholic; he was a child of the Great Depression and had a strong work ethic. However, when the workday was over, that was it — he firmly resisted after-hours work, and didn’t take work home at night, either.

Early that afternoon, Mom arrived with Angie to take me home. The hospital, as they do, insisted on putting me in a wheelchair to travel down to the very same lobby I’d been walking through with Nurse Sandra a few hours before. Yes, I’d snuck off to the bathroom in between. Hormones! Angie rounded up the books and clothes Mom had brought me, I got in the station wagon, and off we went.

In an era where most people my age had parents in their mid-to-late thirties, I had parents in their mid-fifties. My parents met relatively late in life — most of their peer group was long since married — and then dated longer than most people after that, and didn’t get around to trying for kids until my dad was pushing 40. They soon found that they couldn’t conceive. Thus, I wound up being adopted. They wanted two, but in the 1960s adoption agencies wouldn’t place a child if either parent was over 40.

They moved from California to the Houston area a year before I arrived and bought a nice little ranch house in what were the far west suburbs. By the 2000s, their neighborhood was considered quite close in. A combination of good planning and luck gave them a quiet neighborhood, neighbors with similar values, excellent schools, police you didn’t mess with, and so forth. Their house was not actually in Houston itself, but was in a little suburb named Hunters Creek, part of a little group of suburbs that banded together to provide schools and services. Even the post office just put Houston on things, though. If you were from the area, the distinction mattered. If you weren’t, it was just ‘Houston’.

The entire area was full of trees. An overhead view looked as much like a forest as suburbia; I’d looked at it with Google Earth a few times. It had quiet little streets that were anything but uniform or in a pattern. Almost everyone had kids, almost all the kids played outside constantly, and cars watched out for them. It was a very pleasant variation on suburbia, without the gridded streets and cookie-cutter houses.

Every kid had a bike, and every kid rode them all over the place. Not having a bike would have been unthinkable. Things were too far apart for comfortable walks, but you could get to most anything you wanted in an easy bike ride. Unlike the 2000s, parents didn’t fret if their kids were out of contact for hours, and it was fine to be any of a dozen places without letting them know which it would be.

The drive home took about 20 minutes. It was a quiet drive. No one wanted to talk, and that was fine by me. I was feeling apprehensive about getting home. What would be the same? What would be different?

Turns out, not much was different. There was an extra bike out back — Angie’s, I presumed — but that was it for differences outside that I could see. Mine was there; they’d gotten the tires repaired, but I thought we needed to replace it.

As almost always, we came in through the back door (they reserved the front door for ‘company’, which was rare). From the back door you go through the den, dining room, and living room or kitchen to get to the hall with the bedrooms. I opted for the kitchen. Everything looked just as I expected it to look. The den contained Dad’s desk, which always looked the same: orderly piles of papers, the filing of which made sense to him and only to him. It had been a nightmare to clean out when he passed away. The kitchen was Mom’s territory, and it looked the way it always had.

Until I moved out, Dad never cooked a thing except grilled meat. After that, Mom made him learn to cook simple things, but he was always at a loss. Me? I learned to cook in college and got pretty good at it. I was hoping those skills would transfer; I was looking forward to volunteering to help sometimes. Mom was a terrific baker, but not so good at other things, and not very adventurous, even for the 1980s. I knew from the first go-round that my parents would like food they’d never tried in 1980. I had no idea if Angie could cook. And I had no idea if she would enjoy trying some new things (new to our family, anyway) — but it was worth a try.

It wasn’t until I got to the bedrooms that there were obvious differences. The closest bedroom to the kitchen was mine. It always had been and still was. The decorations on the door were the things I would have had then, mostly. The middle bedroom had been Mom’s storage area before. It was Angie’s, as I’d expected. The license plate that said ‘Angie’ gave that away; so did the paper cut-out flowers. I thought it might be a bit over-the-top in projecting ‘nice girl’. The door was ajar letting me see that the walls were now pink.

Opening my door — which had its own license plate, apparently from Galveston - yielded the second, if expected, difference. My room was orderly. I could have counted the times that was true the first go-round on one hand. Cleaning, organizing, filing, and things like that weren’t my strengths. I thrived on chaos, but I knew — had known for years — that I always let it go too far.

My room held the same dresser, same bookshelves, same desk, same bed. The same curtains and same rug completed the look. The closet doors were closed, but I suspected the clothes would be the same. That was unfortunate; my taste in clothes had been lousy in high school. Things would need to change. A lot.

I ducked into my room, telling Mom and Angie that I was tired, turned off the lights and climbed into bed. I just needed a little quiet to process things. Until now, it was real, but it also wasn’t. I hadn’t been home, hadn’t been face to face with the next four years of being a high schooler, or the enigma that was Angie’s presence.

Surprising myself, I drifted off. I woke to a knock on the door. Angie’s voice: “Hey! Steve! Wake up! It’s dinnertime!”

I dragged myself out of bed, just a bit groggy, and almost went out the door. Then I realized I didn’t have pants on. I doubted that was going to fly. I grabbed the jeans I’d been wearing and headed to the dining room. Almost too late, I remembered it was my job to set the table, or had been. Looking at the table, I’d guessed right. I grabbed the silverware and set it out. Angie seemed to be in charge of beverages, which was Dad’s job before. She asked everyone what they wanted (the choices tonight were water, tea, or milk) and set glasses out for everyone. Coke would be a choice shortly, most likely, but I was going to opt out this time.