Come on Up to the House
(Brennan, K / Waits, T) Performed by Tom Waits
Well, the moon is broken and the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house
The only things that you can see is all that you lack
Come on up to the house
All your crying don't do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross, we can use the wood
You gotta come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through
You got to come on up to the house
There's no light in the tunnel, no irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And you're singing lead soprano in a junkman's choir
You got to come on up to the house
Does life seem nasty, brutish and short
Come on up to the house
The seas are stormy and you can't find no port
Got to come on up to the house, yeah
You gotta come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home I'm just a-passing through
You got to come on up to the house, yeah
You gotta come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through
You got to come on up to the house
There's nothing in the world that you can do
You gotta come on up to the house
And you been whipped by the forces that are inside you
Gotta come on up to the house
Well, you're high on top of your mountain of woe
Gotta come on up to the house
Well, you know you should surrender, but you can't let it go
You gotta come on up to the house, yeah
Gotta come on up to the house
Gotta come on up to the house
The world is not my home I'm just a-passing through
You gotta come on up to the house
Gotta come on up to the house
You gotta come on up to the house
Yeah yeah yeah
Gosh, I knew that I was feeling ambivalent about continuing my life story - and mentally blaming it on a resistance to doing "homework" over the summer months - but summer is long over, I have successfully avoided writing anything too personal by using my Tunesday posts to record interesting present day experiences I've had with the family, and now that I realise that I haven't picked up my story since May, maybe I can prod it along a bit this week.
As I wrote in a previous post, I got the bug to move into a better neighbourhood before Kennedy started kindergarten in 1999 (and hence the loose connection to this week's fantastic song), so we happily packed up the house and the kids and moved just a couple of kilometers away. The new street was perfect - less traffic, more kids out playing, and a very short walk to a brand new school - and it felt like a massive upgrade to our lives. We moved at the end of July and had a housewarming/birthday party for Kennedy in August, and in addition to family and some old friends coming to celebrate with us, we were thrilled that a couple of neighbour girls poked their heads over the fence to see if they could come over, too. Kennedy had new friends! We ended up meeting some of the parents around this time, too, and there were many promises to get together soon. Dave and I had new friends, too!
We did go over to the next door neighbours not long after - Dave and Janet had a little girl, Colleen, who was a year older than Kennedy and a son, Matthew, a year older than Mallory - and there were several other neighbourhood couples there, too. One of the women told me that they had a ladies' bowling night that I should think about joining, and that made me tremble inside: I had been so lonely and so isolated for so long that I could think of nothing else I would like better (even if I have had very little experience bowling). I talked to Dave about it later, suggesting that maybe, just one night a week he could guarantee to be home in time to watch the girls so I could go out; and although he assured me he was "pretty sure" it could happen, that woman never asked me again, and besides, Dave could never get himself home in any kind of a regular schedule. I never did make any friends.
Kennedy had a wonderful time playing with Colleen that summer, usually joined by Alexa from the other side of us, but there was something a little offputting about Colleen; something a bit too sexually advanced for a five year old that I was leery of exposing Kennedy to (I lost my mind when Kennedy came home from the neighbours' house one day to say that they had been watching the Spice Girls movie; my baby singing, "If you wanna be my lover...") Before school started, Janet next door asked me if I would be interested in making some money babysitting her kids during the school year, and that really took me aback. She presented this to me as a great opportunity for a stay-at-home Mom (without even knowing that I had a diploma in ECD), and she was totally floored when I declined - especially with a one year old baby, I had no desire to split my attention with other people's kids. Kind of cast a chill over our budding friendship; I was the reason she had the hassle of bringing her kids to daycare.
On a positive note: For one of the last times, the kindergarten teachers from Kennedy's new school made home visits to their new students (this was discontinued before Mallory started the same school three years later). It was a lovely experience for Kennedy to meet her new teacher in our own home - they drew pictures together and talked about all of Kennedy's favourite things - and it certainly made the transition from home to school an easy one when that day soon came along. My Mum came up to walk with us to school on Kennedy's first day of kindergarten, and because Kennedy had met the teacher and had made a classroom visit and knew a few faces in the crowd, she walked into the classroom with hardly a glance back at me. Not all the tears on the first day of kindergarten belong to the kindergartners themselves.
Gotta come on up to the house
Gotta come on up to the house
The world is not my home I'm just a-passing through
You gotta come on up to the house
