by The sorter
These past few weeks I’ve been sorting through closets and boxes and old bedrooms. I’ve said at times I feel like I’m going through an old estate. Piles of photos that didn’t make it into the photo albums. Envelopes of negatives, old birthday cards and broken picture frames. I often say I’m not sentimental. However, when I see all these cardboard boxes and Rubbermaid tubs perhaps I am a little more than I care to admit. It’s certainly not like tidying up a kitchen cupboard or pantry. There you can check the expiry date and it’s an obvious choice. Cans that remain can be resorted and placed all in line and you’re done. Your life-in-a-box, so to speak, takes real work and one I can only do in small increments of time.
I am now halfway done sorting through this room, but I got a bit stuck this week. Although I usually empty out a room before I paint, we just don’t have the room to relocate everything. And I don’t have the energy to keep sorting. So, I cleared aside half of Erica’s room and got ready to paint the walls.
The painter
As I gathered the paint supplies, the brush and roller and paint tray I also grabbed my speaker – an essential for painting. I always paint to an album or playlist. Sometimes big and loud and danceable and sometimes quieter, with harmonies and words that have meaning and I sing along. In fact, I can still remember certain albums played when painting different rooms in our house. (And obvious different stages in my life).
At least three wall colours and probably 18 years ago in our kitchen it was Avril Lavigne’s ‘Let’s Go’. Adele’s newly released album ’21’ in our living room. ‘The Best of Bowie’ in our main bathroom. As the speakers get smaller and better, my music taste shifts and then settles again into familiar tracks.
Today, I listened to Rose Cousins’ ‘Bravado’ for probably the 20th time, although it was only released weeks ago. Her lyrics are a beautiful poetry of emotions, isolation and introverts. I connect to the words and her storytelling. I’m not sure it if was the choice of album, or I picked this album today because I was already feeling sentimental, but as I listened to these songs and painted these walls my mind wandered through memories.
The mother
Our daughter Erica moved out last September but really, she’s hardly lived back at home since the summer of 3rd year university. She is a traveller, a seeker and I know that living in a suburban home with her parents is no place for that type of heart. Both our girls are independent and happy to be in their own apartments, and I love that, but I also love that they both still like to spend time with us when they can. We stay close and connected even when we are apart.
So, as I paint over the walls of her bedroom, I’m not sad that she is not here because if she was, she wouldn’t be who she is today. But as I cut into the wall with my paint brush, I can see remnants of her old room colour poking through the ceiling and I fall into old memories.
When we moved in here over 20 years ago, painting the ceiling was all the rage and so of course I did that in her room. A golden yellow colour was rolled on and that popcorn ceiling soaked up a couple cans of paint. (At the time I did not know that painting over that ceiling would make it a forever textured ceiling…but I digress). So along with her yellow ceiling her walls were purple and there were pops of pink and orange. You might say it was quite a colour palette but in the late 90’s it looked damn good and for a two year old they were all her favourite colours. It was the first room I painted in this house and it was very ‘Erica’.
Over time it became blue with flowered border wallpaper, then just plain blue, and then a calming green. Such intenseness to a more and more calming atmosphere. I guess it’s kind of like parenting. You leave the hospital with your baby in your arms and it’s up to you to take care of this tiny creature. The intense feelings of love and insecurity and doubt fill you up. You need to figure out how to feed her, stop her from crying and bring a temperature down.
You just take it day by day as you really have no idea what you’re doing. For the most part you do get better at it. I remember once telling that to our girls when they were a bit older but still young girls. That we were just trying our best and we didn’t know what we were doing. Their eyes widened in disbelief. But it’s no secret, we are all just trying to do our best and I would rather they know that then think that we always have it together. There is no parenting book or news article that can give you all the answers. It’s a matter of trying and learning. And even as an adult, although I already know this, I remind myself that my own parents are probably working on the same learn-as-you-go field as well.
The daughter
My painting supplies are always the same. The step ladder I received at a wedding shower, drop cloths and old sheets for the floor and a favourite paint brush. The thick canvas drop cloth was from my dad. I’m not sure why he gave it to me, but he probably had an extra one. Or maybe not, as he was always giving me things that he thought we might need. I’ve painted with it for every wall and every piece of furniture since. It’s like a memory blanket. Each drop of dried paint reminds me of rooms gone by.
The bright colours of the girl’s rooms when they were tiny and multiple redos of rooms in this house. It makes me think of my dad and I like that. My dad was an engineer, but he could have been an interior designer. My dad loved to talk about fabrics, and textures and subtle differences in paint colours. He would always have paint swatches for me to look at when I visited. He had lists of pros and cons of new appliances under consideration. And catalogues of shingle and brick colours with the pages marked by post it notes and numbered for first and second choices. My dad was definitely a lists man and for this I am my father’s daughter.
Alzheimers has slowly taken that away from us. The two-sided conversations are no longer really there. As the months go by, I’ve become used to that reality and now only hope he will still know my name the next time he sees me. You get used to how things change, the new normal, and the simple, but yet not so simple act of recognition, is now all I need. He would have loved to talk about the colour I’m painting on this wall right now. I remember once he was describing a white paint that he was painting in their living room in their newly built cottage. I wish I could remember what the actual paint colour was so I could look it up now, but at the time my dad described it on the phone as how a sunset would reflect a subtle rosy tone onto a wall.
So today I was reminded that although painting walls brings fresh starts it also takes me to old memories and years gone by. So yes, I am mostly not sentimental about things except maybe photos, old letters and dog collars. But I am sentimental about memories, old conversations and paint drops.
