According to my mother, I grew up in a haunted house. She located the ghost, specifically, in the attic. One hundred years old, our home looked like a roomy old farmhouse and stood in a semi-rural suburb of Seattle. The upstairs area had two bedrooms, one bath and a cozy den, unfinished with bare beams. My two sisters and I each inhabited these bedrooms at various times throughout our childhoods. The bare wooden floorboards creaked in the den when anyone walked on them.
Mom claimed she heard odd sounds coming from the attic in the middle of the night: moans, wails, thunderous tones like furniture moving. Stairs squeaked when no one trod on them. No apparition was ever seen. It seemed to inhabit the auditory realms. But Mom declared the sounds came from a ghost. It never occurred to me to doubt her or to feel fear. Ghosts seemed to be natural beings, pursuing their mysterious purposes, just as we did. We peacefully co-existed in our different realms. After several years, she named the ghost, George. No one ever questioned the logic of her three daughters sleeping upstairs in George’s territory.
George conveniently took the blame for everything. If the roof sprang a leak, our ghost did it. If a vase fell over, clearly George was at fault. Mom claimed to be afraid to go upstairs because of George.
As an adult, I realized Mom’s fear of the ghost provided her with the perfect excuse to avoid cleaning a large part of the house. By the end of her life, she hadn’t been upstairs for three decades.
Our attic bathroom consisted of a small toilet and a square porcelain sink that stood on spindly metal legs. Our downstairs bathtub suited our family’s bathing needs. In the late 1960s, Mom met her third and final husband, Ernie, who introduced a revolution to our house. He installed a lovely shower upstairs and deeply enjoyed his daily douses. We called the new contraption “Ernie’s Shower.”
Mom and Ernie enjoyed thirty happy years together. The attic, with its beautiful shower, always smelled of Irish Spring soap, his favorite. Sadly, at age 86, Ernie passed away, leaving Mom bereft. Within a day of hearing the news, I travelled from Nevada to Seattle to help her. As usual, I slept in an attic bedroom. At night, the only other person in the house was my bereaved mom in her bedroom downstairs.
In the middle of my first night at home, the attic floorboards creaked so loudly, I woke up. Small cracking sounds occurred in the rhythm of someone’s footsteps; one after the other. I’d heard the sound of people treading those floorboards for a lifetime. I knew each board’s unique squawk. My heart thudded. Someone walked outside my door. Only Mom and I were in the house and Mom never came upstairs. Then I remembered our friendly auditory ghost. With relief, I let out a sigh. It’s only George, I thought. Right away, I felt a new certainty. No, not George. It’s Ernie, come to see his revered shower one last time. I listened to the “steps” walk to the shower and stop. Intuitively, I knew this would be Ernie’s last visit. I sensed he was ready to move on. I heard no more footsteps after that. I sent Ernie my love as I went back to a peaceful slumber. The next three weeks I stayed with Mom, the floorboards remained still. Ernie and, apparently, George were at peace.
Real Life – Real Laughs:
Humor When You Need It Most
Cate Burns’ thirty-eight non-fiction stories of heartfelt humor explore society’s foibles and personal snafus with insightful zingers that will delight readers. Burns casts an unstinting, cock-eyed look at personal change, friendship, sanity and courage.
“Absolutely LOVE the descriptions in this work. Very, very, very clever and, dare I say it? -unique. This is refreshing, funny, inventive and delightful.” -Sharon Whitehill, Ph. D.
