I take on home repairs when I have something else to do. It’s a form of extreme procrastination, by immersing myself in a task that is more horrible/difficult than the thing I am avoiding doing in the first place. (Some of you have seen my selfie in a filtration mask, so you know I’m not kidding).
On this particular procrastinating day, I was tackling the closet in our bedroom. It was basically just a pole, held up by a metal s hook, and a shitty shelf on top which was too shallow to really store anything. Without a solid plan in place, I got out some power tools, and went to work. I was wrenching things out of walls, prying loose boards that had been there forever, when out of nowhere floated a photograph. It had fallen and wedged itself between the wall and the wood. I stopped mid-mess and picked it up, dusted it off. There staring back at me was a family, two young girls showing off the new additions to the family. It is Aug 1957, from the imprinted date on the side. They look too young to be the mothers, more like the sisters…but wait, they look nothing alike. The babies look somewhat like them, so maybe they are the neighbor girls both holding up their new baby brother/sisters. They are standing in front of what is now my house, I think. I’m pretty sure. They might be the owners of the names I found inside the downstairs closet, painted over, but not too well, as if someone didn’t really have the heart to do it. One was a boy’s name, and one a girl’s, though I don’t remember now, having applied a second coat.
Every house has its secrets. You can sometimes tell immediately when a house has had love in it, and also the reverse, when it has been filled with hatred. What is it that we can feel, that is unseen, but lets us know? This house had love in it, but also a few fights, lingering under the floorboards. I’ve found a few other (tangible) things here, some handmade metal tools in the walls of the garage, a few excavated cars from the yard. It is humbling to think that one day we will pass on this house to a new family; the cycle will continue. I should leave something in the wall for them to find.
My brother did this, when he was 6. We lived in an old ramshackle house, one where we could roll a ball on the second floor and it would roll back to us. My parents thought they’d fix it up, that it had good bones. It did have good bones, but that was about it. (They were about the tenth couple to try to repair it). It’s where my dad taught my brother how to fix things, how to rip down a wall and put one back up. I remember watching, I was too little to join, but I loved the chaos and the mess and the wallpaper paste smell. When I was older, he taught me how to do things too, or at least try. My brother was helping in his own room, and he decided to leave his mark: name, date, and age. Then he sealed the wall up again.
Many, may years later, as in, 30 years later, my brother was passing through town. He decided to swing by the old house, with it’s huge gaping porch, made when porches where an invitation to come on over and stay awhile. He pulled over. It looked better, someone was truly fixing it. He decided to go and ask if he could see it, take a look around.
He rang the doorbell and a man opened the door. My brother introduced himself.
‘Hi! My name is Paul, and when I was little I used to live here.”
The man stopped him, mouth slightly agape.
You must be Paul Canfield, he said, turning a little white. He ushered him inside. “Come in, I have to show you something.”
And he led Paul to his old room, where just the day before he had opened up the wall.
Paul Canfield, Age 6, 3/10/1976.
They had a good laugh about the oddness of the situation. But I am not a big believer in coincidence. I believe we are meant to find the people we have in our life, for the right reasons. I believe the man opened the wall up the day before, so something in my brother could open up and want to see a part of his past.
I believe this picture of the girls was a reminder to me of the impermanence of it all, or maybe just that Cosmos probably would grow well in that particular spot beneath the window. I would love to find its owner, to ask how it all turned out for them. I think I’ll start with the house records; see what I turn up.
The closet is fixed, but this photograph has been floating around the house; I am currently using it as a bookmark. Sometimes I just stare at it, and come up with a story about who they are and what they did with their lives. If I rip down a wall, will they tell me? Or can I just be content knowing that there was love here? If I can leave anything behind, that’s what I want it to be, a lingering sense that this is a good place, and there is laughter lodged in the corners.