Painting

I spent part of this morning painting the Boy's room with our college student-helper, Anita. We are going to be painting the second floor, which includes the kids' bedrooms plus the Lego Room. Anita just graduated, and I wanted her help before she finds a real job instead of her part-time job of doing odds and ends around my house, like folding laundry, emptying and loading the dishwasher, and organizing my basement. She is very efficient and organized, and she helped me purge the first floor of our house before we got new floors. She has no attachment to our stuff, so she can ask hard questions like, "Will you ever wear this again? Really?"  Last year, she helped me paint my stairwell, bedroom and office. Having a second set of hands makes time fly and the job get done twice as fast. Everyone needs an Anita.

I had booked Anita to help me with this a few weeks ago to fit in after her graduation activities. Sunday, Claire-Adele and I went and bought paint. Normally, I like to paint, but this weekend I wasn't looking too forward to it, and I couldn't figure out why. I started to get excited once I bought the paint and had it in the house. Anita is like a tornado--there is no procrastinating. When she arrives, we start to work. This is good. I might never have gotten around to painting the kids' rooms if I had to do it alone.*

Yesterday, Anita came over and we started organizing the Boy's room. Rather, she organized while I sat and got lost in reverie about three crib blankets we found in his closet, one from my dear friend Maggie who I used to work with years ago. Another blanket was from my former boss, and another was from our old neighbors in St. Louis, also called the McGuire's. See how hard it is? The time it took me to write those sentences was the time it took Anita to move half of the crap out of the Boy's room into the Lego room. See how much I need help? I'd still be up there crying over baby blankets.

We (I mean Anita) moved everything out of the Boy's room except his bed and dresser.

"Damn," said the Boy when he saw his Lego room filled with the contents of his bedroom. "I didn't know I had this much stuff. We have a 'Where's Waldo?' puzzle? We should do that sometime."

This morning, I was in a jolly mood about painting the upstairs. I had a physical therapy appointment at 8:00, and Anita and I would start painting when I got home. This was the first physical labor I've done since my skiing accident back in December, and I was looking forward to it. After I lost the School Board election last November, I had a list of home improvement projects I wanted to tackle, like getting new linoleum for the kitchen and bathrooms. Painting was on the list, but was shuttled to the back of the line when I tore my ACL. I finally felt good enough that I could handle the work.

I love painting because it a) makes the house looks so much better without back breaking work and b) I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I am done. It makes me wonder why I didn't paint these rooms sooner.

Why was I so grumpy today painting later in the morning? Anita is pleasant--that wasn't it. Now that I am getting back to normal, it makes me realize how limited I previously was. In many ways, I should be happy I am better, but in other ways this was a little bittersweet, heavy on the bitter. This is a measure of what I lost for six months. I could be zen about the past and be thankful for the time I spent incapacitated where I was forced to slow down and relax. I did a lot of sewing, a lot of reading and a lot of riding the stationary bike. I am fortunate my situation was temporary and not permanent.

But really, I am not one of those people who is happy when forced to sit still for a long time. I was reading the endnotes in The Sun, and there was a list of quotations about finding strength in adversity.    I am so cynical, I think about how better off Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina, and tsunami victims would be without that level of major adversity touching their lives. Can they survive after losing their homes and possibly families? Perhaps, but it will be hard, and to tell them bad things builds character is kind of bullshit. Maybe those platitudes were meant for first world people who don't have major problems, like scurvy, starvation and lack of accessible clean water.

Still, we survive traumas large and small. There is a young man at the YMCA who had a non-malignant tumor removed from his brain last week. He had to undergo two hours of neurosurgery. He is very athletic, and will only be out of a commission for a few weeks before he can return to normal activity. He looked at me and said, "It's not like my knee went out," nodding at my leg.

What? I thought. The dude has a brain tumor and he thinks he is better shape than me. That's nuts.

But maybe it wasn't. Maybe for a guy who has a job a the YMCA and lifts weights and does cardio everyday, losing and having reduced mobility for six months (before and after surgery) would be worse than a benign tumor. Maybe half of life is saying things aren't so bad.

So Anita and I painted the Boy's room, and it looked so fresh and new. All of the finger smudges and pencil marks and crayon marks and shoe scuffs were gone. I accomplished something I hadn't been able to do in a while. Sometimes you don't realize how bad something was that you were living with until you get the new and improved version. For the Boy, his room is now a blank canvas, empty, ready to be refilled.

"Damn," said the Boy impressed when he saw his clean, white walls. "Damn."


* "You have kids and a husband, right Lauren? Can't they help?" you are asking yourself. Yes, but Anita is way better. There is no yelling, complaining or insisting there is a better way to work when I work with Anita. (Well, you might have to ask her about that.)