When Will was little he loved blue. If you asked him what color he wanted anything to be, he would always say blue. Blue popsicles, blue bikes, blue shirts, blue was always his color. So when I asked him what color we should paint his room, of course he said blue. I knew that if I had asked Duncan, he would have chosen red. But I didn't want a red room, and he didn't care that much, so blue it was.
I worked really hard painting that room. I had to move their bunkbeds. Their very heavy, wooden bunkbeds. Not to mention clearing out all their other stuff, and fixing the holes in the stupid plaster walls- it was a huge job. But I got it done. By myself. As usual. And it looked really good. The room hadn't been painted since we moved in, and it looked so fresh and clean in there.
For about 2 days. Then Will decided to do some creative redecorating, and took a couple of permanent magic markers to his wall and the inside of his closet.
I was so mad when I saw what he had done. I tried everything to get that marker off, but it was stuck good. Well, okay, so maybe I didn't try that hard. Maybe I tried a little bit, then gave up and forgot about it. But my lovely blue walls would remain marred for the next 9 years.
At any rate, life continued to happen. The other 3 walls were still a lovely blue. The marker eventually just blended into the rest of the chaos in a room that was home to two boys.
When we moved out and it came time to paint over Will's masterpiece, I almost couldn't do it. Painting over those marks suddenly took on a huge symbolism for me, of leaving a certain time of life behind and moving on. And of never being able to get some things, and some moments back. We were leaving, Will was growing up, and would never again be the little boy that scribbled on those walls.
I had to take a moment (or an hour) to compose myself, and then to drum up the gumption to just do it, just spread that clean, boring, anonymous white paint over those marks that made that room Will's, and that house ours.
And it did look good, when I got it all painted and fresh again. It's all ready for somebody else to live there now. It isn't my boy's room anymore.
And this was another moment.
I was scraping the Bessie Pease Gutmann wall paper border off the walls in Audrey's room. She came in and wanted to try it. I let her give it a shot, figuring she would quickly find out that it was hard work, boring and no fun, and give up. Two hours or so later, she had scraped off almost the entire border. She absolutely amazed me with how hard she worked doing a really awful job, and what a great job she did. Great irony there, that Audrey should be the one to scrape that border off, when it was her I put it up for, ten years ago. We were so happy to be having a baby girl and I really wanted a frilly little girl nursery, so again, I worked my tail off, at eight months pregnant, painting the walls and hanging that border. Watching her take it off brought back that same feeling, of seeing time pass and realizing that some things are gone forever.
It's all good now. We are happy in our new house, we have each other and new rooms to make new memories. And being past the era where kids are scribbling on the walls (we are ALMOST there, right Olivia?) absolutely has it's advantages. But I'm really glad I have the pictures. They help me keep perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment