I slapped the navy blue paint swatch on my dining room wall at least a month ago and there it stayed, a square of bare night sky, until yesterday when I peeled it off and walked into Ace Hardware with it stuck to my hand.
My house has been a renovation zone since late January. First an electrician to update the wiring, in the basement flipping breakers, running an extension cord to my modem so I could keep working. Then a contractor and his brother knocking down walls to destroy and reassemble two bathrooms in new shapes, dust everywhere then and still. A quiet man who replaced the windows, waving to me from outside, done in two days. My dad there all days, vacuuming and cutting tile and hauling fiberglass insulation from the attic and bringing my empty trash bin back from the curb on Mondays when there was nothing else to do.
To the side of it all, there’s me in the corner of my new sunroom, surrounded by totes of displaced belongings, working at my desk, muting my Zoom to answer questions about light switches, occasionally padding to the kitchen to make a tiny coffee.
The thing is I’m not doing any of this renovation work, nor am I paying for it. There’s “wow I am so lucky to have my dad making all this happen for me” and there’s also “wow all these guys have my dad’s number instead of mine.” He texts me in the morning letting me know what time they’ll all arrive. Big juicy ants started dotting my kitchen counter when the temperature rose, and before I could even google what to do, my dad arrived with a poison sprayer and secured the perimeter. Turns out the garage is too small to store the riding mower, so tomorrow a landscaper couple is dropping by to talk about mowing my lawn for spring.
At least materially I never want for much and I am grateful. But there’s a rollicking tumbling-downhill feeling of helplessness to it too. Who am I, weeks from turning 40, not even cutting my own grass?
I understand it’s hard to feel sympathy for the girl with the most cake. Little Lindsey will get everything she wants as usual, my ex husband sneered last year, when we were squarely in the shit.
So I find control where I can. Choose lavender tile for the bathroom. Mop the dust from the floors at night. Grow my flower seedlings, put their false sun on a timer. Buy studded sandals online and thank the guys when they bring in the package in one of their loops from the van or attic or basement. I try to stay the course, savor the progress even when it feels slow, not count the days even when the original six-week timeline comes to mind like the punchline to an old reliable joke. In my mind a vague idea of summer, when the house is done floats, glowing, and my thoughts stretch toward it like a plant to the actual sun. Who would be ungrateful for all this?
My bedroom is renovation HQ right now, so I’m sleeping across the hall, bed wedged into the corner of the guest room, nothing on the walls. I don’t know how to decorate the rooms until the rooms are serving their own purpose. But the swatch slapped on the dining room wall had its own gravitational pull, calling to me every time I passed through, a square of wine-dark sea.
Yesterday, with a rainy empty Sunday afternoon stretching ahead of me, I went to the hardware store. Mike, an employee surely my dad’s age, scoffed confidentially with me when I asked him if I really needed to prime the walls first.
You’ve got everything you need, he said. Have fun.
At home, I switched the radio on and cracked a lemon-lime seltzer. Festus circled my ankles as I taped off the windowsill and doorframe. I dipped the roller into the paint tray, soaking it with color. By nightfall the space was new and yet familiar, like it had come into its own.
After the room was blue and the day was done, I washed my hands and unwrapped my first-ever tarot deck. When it came time to define the questions I had, I stuttered in the flickering candlelight. I mean… I said to the universe.
How could I make the questions any smaller than who am I, who will I become?
I drew the Magician and the Fool cards one after the other, potentially the sign of a weak shuffle, but they felt inevitable all the same. the beginning of something beautiful and powerful—all made possible by what lies within you. My red nails were filled in with navy around the edges. I paced around my house and said aloud I know. I know! and my voice echoed back to me from the liminal rooms.
PS: I am trying to find a way to write about my divorce in a way that feels safe. It’s frankly scary but I’m gaining more clarity.
From the beginning of renovation life: