How I love a project!

This morning I went to Lowe's, a first venture since last March into a store with a parking lot more than 10 cars occupied.  What possessed me?  Well, I've had my two vaccine shots, for one thing; I, as usual, armored myself in mask and gloves, for another; and for a third...the most exciting...I have a Project!  

the horror

My husband, poor thing, used to cringe when he sensed that air of redoing descend on me.  "You always need a project," he would moan, knowing that the next months (or even the next trip to Oden's Country Store) would bring dreaded change underfoot.  It's a good thing he can't see the upheaval planned for this spring...probably dragged into part of the summer, as things go.   

he's moved on

My house, inhabited for the last two years by my two best men, their two cats, a sometime lizard and its accompanying crickets, and before them by my dear, well-aged aunt and uncle, needs some renovation before I can make it mine again.  Seven years ago, when I bought it, I'd had to have a go it, as its 27-year history was a rental to students, mostly.  Fortunately I had my talented and inventive brother Charles and nephew Joe to work on a lot of it, building cabinets, putting in a new shower, tiling, painting, helping with appliances, etc.  Along the way, I had the porch added and fixed this and that as needed.

the porch that changed everything

This time, however, aside from the normal seven-year itch to repaint and repair, this remodel looks toward the future.  Enough people have passed through as guests and co-residents in those years to show me what a functional (and appealing) space I have to work toward, so that for the next decades, if necessary, it will serve what I am and what I am to become. 

Botticelli Red

Rain

As I go through each room, in mind or in actuality, I first appraise it for use and then for comfort...which includes ease of mind and eye.  I am one for whom the space she inhabits is as much as possible an extension of the psyche, though truthfully I am pretty capable of making a space do.  I'm not one for glamour, particularly, nor for the vast square footage popular in bedrooms, kitchens and (I have never figured out why) laundry rooms.  What I need is enough room for me and for whoever chooses to drop in and live for a while. (For instance, this time my upstairs, though formerly my lair, will now become what my sisters call their "snow bird apartment".  My studio, downstairs now, will be big enough for a wide open work table in the middle.  And the doorway between the bathroom and bedroom will be wide enough for a wheelchair, if it comes to that.)  

windows that don't leak

storm door that actually keeps out the storm

Although work won't begin until April, the past weeks have found me almost deliriously busy collecting workpeople and materials, choosing paint and countertops and sinks and windows.  (Today, at Lowe's, it was a quick pickup of faucets.)  Stone and tile installers, plumbers and electricians, painters and carpenters...my address book is filling with their phone numbers, and my hopes riding along with them.

a pantry I can see things in

shelves I can reach

    

And that's only for inside the house.  I've also been collecting visions of landscapes to try later on, especially in the back yard. Over the year, Joseph has worked miracles of hard labor to transform the front slope, with help from Alexander to dig up all those rocks, and they have given me a wonderful topography to work with.  

Joseph's front slope

Of course, Alexander and his friend Louie need to be convinced that, as they move next door, they will have to take with them their complex system of brick, stone and wood forts, built over months for hours at a time each and now ranged over half the top of the front yard.  On the afternoons I sit at the house, listening and watching their project, I can only admire the industry and creativity they display.  Their ingenuity, invention, narrative and cinematic geniuses have brought all they have to bear on it (and also on most of my daffodils).  So moving the fort to a new location, even only fifty or so linear yards away, is not, I will tell you, a happy prospect for them.  They are, in fact, preparing for war...against me and my gardening plans.

But gardens I will have, for whenever my energies turn to the outdoors.  

not a fountain but a dream of one

  

garden path instead of ivy tangle

For right now, I am gratefully pulled out of the pandemic and its quieter demeanor, as well as its endlessly altering landscape, by planning for what's to come.  My blood is racing, my head sparking with ideas and practicalities, estimates, budgets and timelines.  I carry around a ruler and a fattening notebook of possibilities.

Not that I am expecting the impossible...renovation, whether physical or spiritual, is never trouble-free. And you know the old, tried-and-true saying about plans... our old 1890 house Down East was enough proof that opening up a wall, or even a light switch plate, was opening Pandora's box.

Still, you remember what was left in that box once that unfortunate girl finally got it shut...Hope.  It is nice to have a project again, to begin with ideals, at least some of which are bound to come true.

February: whether weather

 It's one of those odd, in-between days when the morning begins at a decent warmth and then slides down from there.  Hours after dawn, still it's dark, too dark for a morning coming after a day of  impressive, spring-like sun.

That's what weather is like...changing at the whim of unseen forces and bringing change to us, too, in sometimes small, sometimes huge ways. Taking the temperature of today means I look out among the winter trees, hoping to see another clump of freshly bloomed daffodils brave among the dried leavings...but knowing that we might just as well take what comes into stride.

My cousin Barbara, talking about the house at the shore yesterday, reported that there had been a severe Nor'wester which wiped out a whole beach a few towns down from ours.  People talk about replenishing sand, she said, but why?  Nature is going to do what it wants.  It always has.  

shore news photo

That got us to thinking back over our childhoods, remembering each first visit to the shore in early spring, running out from the car to see how far or near the ocean had decided we could be from our bulkhead.  It was always different, and we took what we got, happy just to be where we were, whether we could jump way down off a high boardwalk, play scrunched under it, or simply step an inch or two off into the sand.

At whatever age, we are always reminded by such weather that the universe is a whole lot bigger than we are.  The illusion of control that fills some perspectives among us is an unfortunate pitfall of a limited imagination.  You know, Barbara said, in a way it's kind of comfortable knowing how small we are in the scheme of life...I like knowing that here I am in my own little world, watching the birds at the kitchen window, going about my life wherever it takes me.  Living comfortably with whether can be a virtue.  It's certainly what the birds do.

Bluebirds at feeder in snow, photograph by Barbara Jaeger

It's a good way to think about today, wondering whether the dark will lighten, wondering whether a sweater or a coat will suffice for a walk...and will it be a raincoat, after all?  Boots?  Rain isn't predicted until tomorrow, but the sky seems to be taking on a maudlin tone, and the wind's up.

Whatever, we just adjust to it...or, rather, whether, like so many universal forces, adjusts us to suit its tenor.