On prowl with 'Matlock' mom
I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm nosy. If you leave your curtains open, right about nightfall, and I'm out taking a walk, well, I'm going to peek in. You know, just from the sidewalk. Nothing creepy or (gasp) illegal, just simple nosiness. I can't help it. It's my nature.
Come to find out, it's everybody's nature. Sure, no one wants to be called nosy or rubbernecker or thought of as a snoop, but we're hard-wired to see how other people do the things they do. Enter the Framingham Historical Society's annual House Tour, which is Sunday. Not only is nosiness, ahem, curiosity welcomed, it's encouraged.
But if I'm nosy, my mother is practically Matlock, which is why I always buy her a ticket to the house tour for Mother's Day.
The tour will open doors into many unusual houses, but a curious mother will open doors into other people's lives. Mine likes to "detect" things. She'll walk into a sunken living room, sniff toward a 60-inch flat screen television and announce the profession, gender, and political affiliation of the homeowner.
I remember one year trying to glide over the pristine white wall-to-wall carpeting of a house so clean that I would have felt safe having an appendectomy on the kitchen counter.
"How do people do this?" I whispered to my mother, thinking about my own kitchen. I wouldn't change a tire in there, never mind elective surgery.
"They don't," she said and pulled open a cabinet door bursting with the same mélange of junk mail, lost buttons, extension cords, and coupons that fall out of my drawers at home.
Then there was the year my mother apparently received psychic messages from beyond about a certain house. She touched a Japanese wall hanging in the entryway and closed her eyes.
"The sister-in-law brought this home from a tour of the Far East," she said.
"The mother played that piano during a dinner for 60. The husband retired eight years ago. He was a podiatrist with so-and-so for 25 years. The couple took a cruise after he retired and they plan on having the north garden dug up and replaced with a . . ."
"Mom," I gushed, awestruck. "How do you do that?"
"It's a gift," she said.
We'd never just admire the humble ranch house that hides a secret ballet studio or in-home movie theater or African masks that look as if they might have been worn in some magical ceremony. No. We won't leave until we've done a complete psychological profile.
Last year we toured one of those big, old, circa Methuselah homes. This one happened to belong to the friend of a friend, so I was able to corroborate my mother's profile.
"Wife's an artist," she said.
We were standing in front of a set of hand-painted tarot card blocks mounted on a wall. The blocks were beautiful. As a matter of fact, the house was full of vibrant, original art and literary quotes, and shelves overflowing with books about art, literature, and philosophy. Even the granite island in the kitchen was inscribed with a quote. Obviously the wife was an artist.
"Husband's a political activist-vegetarian-guitar player in an acoustic band."
More details on the Framingham Historical Society House Tour. Arts, Page 10
That one was a stretch. Sure, there was a room lined with CDs. A Buddha statue was outside in the perennial garden. A full, chef-quality, stainless-steel kitchen wrapped around the granite island. But I didn't see a guitar in the place, and I looked.
The house was probably my all-time favorite.
Had it been for sale, fully furnished, I would have offered my own house, my mother's house, my left kidney, and possibly one of my children for it. I didn't care if the Munsters owned it. But, since I could, I called my friends to ask about the owners.
"Nope, neither one's an artist or in a band and I'm pretty sure they all eat meat," she said. "But they are real smart," she assured me.
On Sunday, Matlock and I will be in Framingham Centre, poring over a photocopied map while planning our order of attack, and waiting for the official kickoff of this year's tour. Usually a man just says something like "Go forth and look in people's homes," but I think a little pistol would be much more festive.
And then hundreds of nosy, ahem, curious men and women in broad hats and bright springtime colors will spread out across Framingham Centre like overturned watercolors, racing to their cars.
We won't want to be left behind, not on this day of days.
For five hours Sunday we will skulk, slide, slink, slip, snake, and sneak in and out of other people's closets and cabinets all the while maintaining a running commentary and acting under the attractive guise of permission, our nosiness satiated for another year.
Dawn Dellasanta-Swann lives in Framingham.
If you would like to share a slice of suburban life, e-mail your essay (under 700 words please) to Martin Finucane at mfinucane@globe.com. 