from gray to white

My fingers are so swollen I can barely close my hand around the handle of my coffee cup.  The tips bursting and rough- they remind me more of BC's hands than my own.  My elbows ache.  My back is throbbing.  Even, for whatever reason, my feet hurt.

After 2 showers I keep finding patches of white paint on my body; my arms, my legs, it's in my hair. I have ruined 2 sets of clothing.  I knew I would.  I am the world's messiest painter.  

Picture Cookie Monster eating cookies.  Now make that me and put a paintbrush in my hand.  That's me impulsive, erratic, and impatient.  Painting requires everything I am not and yet I am the one who paints here.   

But without the usual argument of "Honey, it's not worth it. I am going to remodel the whole thing soon..." BC set me up to repaint the kitchen (4th time since we have lived here?) while he and Beach spent a long weekend out on a Father and Daughter camping trip.

I figure after the last few months of my skimming the bottom he was grateful to see me want to do anything.  From the day after my last dentist appointment, I watched him watching me, waiting to see if I could free myself from my sadness or if he would need to jump in.  

On Friday about 3PM BC's truck loaded with camping gear pulled out of the driveway.  By 4:00 I took all the dishes and such out of the kitchen.  They were stacked neatly at first on the dining table but I quickly ran out of the room.  By the time the kitchen was cleared the front room looked like a good candidate for an episode of hoarders.  

I told myself I was prepping for the next day but by 10PM the first horrible coat was completely finished.  So was half a season of the podcast Serial and 2 LaCroix sodas.  I fell asleep on the sofa watching a documentary on Stalin. That's where I was when the dog started growling into the dark at the Not My Pizza Delivery Guy knocking at the front door. Scared the shit out of me! 

At 6AM on Saturday, after already putting on a streaky second coat of paint, I was at Home Depot picking out new hardware.  I stopped by the paint section to get a sample size of Surfs Up Blue, another paintbrush, and a paint cup.  Don't worry my kitchen is not Surfs Up Blue, it's white this time.  Clean and crisp, not really smooth, but new and bright.

It was the paint BC gave me.  He said it was expensive cabinet paint left over from a job- perfect for me.  He gave me one brush, one roller, a pan, 2 drop cloths, a roll of tape, a sanding block, and some tool that looks like a giant butter knife that was run over by a truck or maybe a weird bottle opener- I have no idea what it is for although yeah, it does open bottles pretty well.

Back on Friday while BC had been gathering my painting supplies I was packing his cooler and the other camping gear he would need for the weekend.  It was pretty funny.  Each of us doing the other's job for them.  Every time we handed something off to the other I would offer warnings about too much sun, about lightning, about snakes and BC would explain how you should get the roller wet then ring it out before starting, about not soaking the brush up to the handle in the paint.

I never did soak the brush up to the handle in the paint and yet there is paint on the handle anyway...   
  

The paint counter at Home Depot and I have some history.  It's where after asking way too many questions about the paint I was buying (for the last time I went rogue and painted the bathroom & the kitchen) the nice old guy behind the counter looked around then leaned in, "Does your husband know you are here?" 

As a matter of fact no- if he did I wouldn't have any questions.  

This time when the clerk asked what kind of paint I said, "Whatever you use for cabinets." He smiled thinking I was joking.  

I smiled; not joking- I don't know.  There is a lot I don't know about all this.  In fact, I spent a good deal of time wondering if Home Depot sells nails because I can never find any in BC's shop.  I usually harvest them from the walls of the house.  It's an old house.  It has lots of spares.  If that fails I can always pry one or two loose from the packages of nails wired together for the nail gun.      

"My husband is a contractor," I explained to the paint clerk. "I do things while he's gone and if I mess it up he fixes it or if I pull it off he says nice work.  It's a win-win for me." 

I was given a tiny can of whatever-kind-of-paint-you-paint-cabinets-with in Surfs Up Blue and sent on my way.  I drove around the crowd of day labors to the McDonald's at the edge of the Home Depot parking lot.  I ordered a large coffee, a sausage biscuit, and a hash brown. I don't remember eating any of them but I do remember reheating the coffee- twice.

Three to four coats of paint in the kitchen (quantity winning over quality), 2 random door frames and a cupboard in the bathroom painted white (waiting for paint in the kitchen to dry), the other half of the podcast Serial, and a good part of S-town later, I left for the grocery store to find lunch dinner.  

In line, my cart: a six-pack of hard lemonade and a small frozen pizza.  (Don't worry too much about my nutrition, I had a big mixed greens salad with a slice of the pizza.) The clerk looked at my hands.  "Painting something?" she asked cheerfully. 

"Yes, my kitchen while my husband is gone...."  That's when I realized it.  I hadn't thought about anything else other than painting for 2 days.  For 2 days I didn't exist even to myself- and it was wonderful.  

I pushed long and late and I was willing to be miserable to do something that needed to be done.  Something I wanted to be done.  It was awful, physically and mentally uncomfortable.  I remember thin lines of thought drown in thick streams of paint.  

Quiet, limitless white time.  And I chose to be there when I hadn't chosen to be anywhere else for months.

I told her the same thing I had told the paint clerk about being a contractor's wife but she said, "Maybe he will hire you." 

"No way.  It is horrible work."  I answered but I was laughing as I said it.  It is horrible, wonderful work.  Who knew that was the answer.  That all I needed was a good whitewash or more precisely the work behind it.  

Often chasing the sun is the answer but sometimes the answer is inside the darkness itself.  Sometimes misery just needs company.  Like a cut needs a bandage to feel better.  My tired and my miserable needed a place to go.  And it did.  It went from gray to white.