Too many days had passed when the first thing I saw was the patchwork of paint and caulk on the nook-wall where Katie and I sleep. Too many nights the off white paint accented by the too-white filler I used to patch holes left behind from the prior owners was the last thing I saw in the light. Scuff marks from bike tires lined up on the tall walls where our bikes hang dormant from rafters through the winter. The longer we waited to get to the project of painting our bedroom the more the original color transformed itself from off-white to dirty-white. Not until all the furniture was moved, the prep work done and the primer was applied did it become clear just how sweet a fresh coat of paint would look. So we toiled with the brushes and rollers, drop clothes and ladders through the weekend. As it snowed and blowed outside, Katie and I cut straight lines around window and door trim and rolled new life into the walls.
Painting makes some people crazy. I had an elementary school teacher who used house painting as an example of a job that did not require skill or focus. How many people actually look at the tightness of a line cut to demark the wall and ceiling? Who cares? It's another vocation that is unheralded because of it's lack of glamour. In a phone conversation with Jimmy Hewitt yesterday he sang praise for plumbers and their unseen toils. Is there enough time in the day to appreciate the heroes of detail that make our world a bit sharper? Probably not.
As a part of the painting prep I had to move my writing journals. Every time the collection moves I dive in for a trip into the past. Painting played a significant role in my twenties. Working in Groton Long Point (CT) through early college summers and then for TBN at Watervale (MI) and surrounding locals in the later stages of my collegiate career - not to mention painting Jim Roth's Trident Apartment building in Fairbanks, AK. If the vocation itself is less-than-glamorous, my experiences have been rich and textured. Surrounded by friends in beautiful locations, working outdoors, making decent scratch, and learning how to manage big projects while balancing a generally crazy social existence. Feeling the sun beat on my back, laughing at crass job site humor, and progressing from project to project filled a niche in my existence for many summer days. I Watched the patterns of each building move through the stages of prep to finishing touches while summer days got longer then shorter until the strings of (ir)responsibility pulled me back to the mountains.
As the snow whirled around our windows Katie and I finished the application of Jersey Cream to the walls and Polyeurothane to the loft trim that Jimmy put up for us. As the clock ticket off minutes and hours, I could revisit sites of the past with each stroke of the brush. Working away through the project and memories. We bickered about who was doing what and missing this or that, but laughed through the project until it was done. I stowed the journals back onto their shelf and tucked another project in a beautiful place under my belt.
As I rolled onto my side after kissing Katie goodnight I drank in the clean wall with the light of Katie's reading lamp. When my eyes closed I was still surrounded by Jersey Cream.
