Sally deVincentis

The yellow house I grew up in had a cellar. Not a basement, but a cellar with a dirt floor, a single light bulb and the damp smell of earth, mold and coal dust. Buried in a corner of this already buried place were the remains of a Victorian love seat. Only her wooden skeleton was left. And there she lay hidden under the cellar steps for forty years… forgotten but not forgotten.

My mother’s mother died in the 1918 pandemic. Soon after the funeral my mother was sent away to boarding school. My mother later became a nurse and married my father. Many years later she returned to her childhood home looking for memories of her mother…and in the house’s attic she found the bare frame of her mother’s Victorian love seat. She took the sofa’s remains back to her new home with plans to make it beautiful again, but time slipped through my mother’s fingers and the bare frame stayed hidden... forgotten but not forgotten.

In 1982 my mother died and the yellow house was sold and emptied, except for the relic in the cellar. I found the sofa there and took her home to my house. For 38 years she has rested in my basement. But in this year of the 2020 pandemic, the sofa is not forgotten. I will make her beautiful again to honor the memories of the mothers she left behind.