My Networker Login   |    Family Matters  Lost, and Found:
Rediscovering a subterranean kington of memories  By Roberta
Israeloff  My mother and I sat in her kitchen. “Daddy told me
not to sell the house,” she said.  I waited a beat to drain the
exasperation from my voice; to remind myself that she’d lived in
this house for 45 years, that moving is a major traumatic event
for anyone—more so for those as change-resistant as my mother.
“He meant don’t sell it right away; not right after he died,” I
said. “He didn’t mean not to sell it when you’re 85.”  “I
guess,” she said, which only meant that she’d heard me, not that
she agreed. I assumed this conversation had dead-ended, as so
many before had when the subject of selling the house and moving
to a nearby senior housing development came up. But she
surprised me a few days later by telling me she’d engaged a
real-estate agent who was coming over on Saturday.  Red-haired
Ruth, friendly and perky but all business, younger than my
mother but older than I, strode in