The Necessary Denouement

Make no mistake. I am a nester. I domesticate. I decorate. I see an empty room in a house and immediately start transforming it in my head. It becomes the set on which very real lives will be acted out, and it must hold those lives in its peace, its meaning, its very existence as home. It is what I do. It is what I have always done. It is my purpose. I have inherited this nester gene from my mother, and I consider it one of her more important gifts to me.

I have also inherited another of her, hmm, rather idiosyncratic habits. The habit of fait changements. It’s a lovely little French-Canadian imperative coined by my grandmother and her mother before her. Loosely translated, it means “make changes.” It is a very real, intuitive power solemnly bequeathed to me through the feminine branches of my family tree. Fait changements is this innate burst of energy that suddenly, and without warning, sweeps through the house and rearranges whole rooms. It is powered by an absolute conviction that a change is needed right now, at this precise moment, for life to move forward.

I am convinced that I give off some sort of scent or high-pitched signal when I feel it coming on, because everyone suddenly goes scurrying to their rooms to lock the doors. When my husband sees me coming with my broom and dust-pan he does a very undignified and desperate spread eagle over his office desk with a look not unlike Gandalf’s when he planted his staff and bellowed to the Balrog, “You. Shall. Not. Pass!” Strangely, my powers are completely neutralized in this room. Maybe it’s the Sacrament of Marriage at work. Who knows? But his inner sanctum has been allowed to remain quite inner and quite sanctum. The rest of the house, however, has felt the inevitable upheaval of change.

When it is happening, it is rather frightening to the people involved. I will admit this. I shove things around, I throw things away with lightening decisiveness before anyone knows what hit them. I move mattresses with a power unknown to mere mortals. A primordial cloud of dust envelopes all, and when it settles, there emerges from the chaos a room transformed. Inevitably, cowering children cautiously creep from under the beds and blink wide eyed at this their new world and say, “Ohhh, I like it better this way.” I never had a doubt.

Fait changements is not a random act of insanity, mind you. It presupposes a real understanding of the nature of time and the acceptance of change in the family drama. It is an intuitive wisdom that realizes the sets must be rearranged every so often to reflect the ebb and flow of this organic growth; to help it along, so to speak. We are sentient beings. Physical surroundings are important revelations of inner truths. That is what makes a mere house a home. The timely changes in our surroundings reveal our history to us, that we are not static beings, that perhaps it is time to move forward as the transformed setting beckons us to do.

An important distinction must be made here. The change is not abrupt and completely foreign each time, but more like a swift and efficient reconfiguration of what already exists. The comfort of the familiar being transformed into something surprisingly new but not altogether strange or unnerving. A crib may be refigured into a toddler bed, a highchair loses its tray and becomes just another seat at the table but is still familiar. Baby dolls are carefully, one at a time, and by consent, taken from shelves and replaced by gerbils, science experiments, or crafts. Books are combed through. The best are kept and new ones added. Curly edged drawings on the wall stand next to new masterpieces that reveal a talent that has grown and not remained stagnant. It brings a delighted surprise to all. Old, useless, cheap toys inevitably gathered over the years are unearthed and ruefully acknowledged as terrible mistakes and distractions, not essence. They are thrown out. This too is growth – to discern the essential from its imposter. When the room is finished, we can see who we were and how we have grown into something new.

Year after year the sets change. One act makes way for the next and bows its way off the main stage and perhaps takes its place among the memories in the attic. Relying on my mother’s fait changement has let me know when it is time to change the set for the next act. I have grown to trust this super-power over the years. I could always count on it. Until now, that is. For, something has gone terribly wrong. I have been slipped some sort of powerful kryptonite leaving me helplessly stuck in Act III and unable to loose myself from its endless loop. Some call it empty nest syndrome. I call it a tragedy.

I wander around my house and it no longer makes sense. Boxes left behind by exiting children bent on new adventures as adults dot the floors. Stray knick-knacks, party hats, concert tickets still lay on desks in rooms with double beds. But no one is there to sleep in them anymore. I walk around in these rooms and find that I don’t make sense here anymore either. What is the point of me? This sudden sense of wandering through a day with no fixed, concrete marker or purpose that is the real gift, no matter how exhausting it seemed at the time, of having children in the house. That gripping feeling of uselessness when for so long I have been in use 24/7. That constant refrain of What now? What now? Echoing off the walls and sing-songing mercilessly in my head, where for years I never needed to ask what I was for or what I would do next. I just knew. And why should I even bother changing the set now when there are no actors left to give it meaning? And around and around it goes. I could never have foreseen this muddled, frightening feeling; this endless loop. I can only pray for mercy, and God sends it little by little.

One day as I sat staring in maudlin confusion at a party hat covered with dust on the windowsill, a small voice whispered in my head, “The denouement. You have forgotten the denouement. That final act of the play in which all the strands of the narrative are drawn together and made clear. You are the voice of the denouement – the person who explains what all this was for. That is your purpose. Act III is over. You have merely missed your cue. You are expected in Act IV.” I bow and exit slowly. What is the setting for Act IV, I wonder?

My powers slowly return. I pray and then rearrange a sofa here. I pray a bit more and move a rug there not quite knowing where it will lead. But a wonderful thing slowly begins to happen. I haltingly gather pieces scattered all about the house and attic into a new configuration of meaning. The denouement. I begin to see that life does not change completely as you get older, but simply needs to be reconfigured. And you must seek peace in what emerges after the primordial dust settles. What emerges is not altogether strange. Lovely things from the past are seen in a new light. Some things hidden away for safe keeping in the raucous madness of Acts II and III are unwrapped and carefully laid on tables once more. They remind me at odd times of what I used to be in Act I when life was young and filled with beauty sought and found. Gratitude slowly ensues. I am reminded of what I used to hold dear at the beginning of things. Flowers in a vase, novels, writing stories late into the night, Beethoven at full volume without having to worry if I will wake a baby. A porcelain cup left on a side table with no worry it will be toppled. It dawns on me so quietly that all of what I was at the beginning, all that I loved shaped the lives of my children in ensuing acts. I feel my fait changement tingling to life within me. I begin to add photos of my long-ago babies to this mix: photos of awkward teens, of proms, weddings, and new babies not my own, but whom I call grand. I might put little presents made by small hands in Act II next to presents made for me by larger hands in Act III. I hang college diplomas near childhood crucifixes, next to a plaster cast of a tiny little hand. I begin to realize that I the mom, am the final narrator of this magnificent story. I am the one who gathers up all the strands of the narrative. I am the keeper of the memories that will explain the whole story should anyone ask the reason for our hope. It is me who must declare that God was faithful, was there behind the scenes in every act. It is what mothers do in Act IV. And if I do not speak, the story will be lost.

Perhaps my children will return to see themselves everywhere among this reconfigured set. Perhaps they will get new insights to bring to the set of their own Act I, where their show must go on. Grandchildren will applaud as they rummage through the attic and be glad that they were invited to the play just in time for Act IV. This is what I am for. This is my purpose. I am the keeper of the gratitude. I am the denouement.

Empty nest syndrome is upheaval and pain. I cannot lie. You will want to curl up and cry. I understand. It is best met with prayer, and a determined Fait Changements! When the primordial dust settles on your new, reconfigured life, may you say in the end, “Ohhhh, I like it better this way.”