Painting

To my dearest, darlingest daughters (who gave me permission to post this),

I thought of you all today when I was peeling stars off the ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stars and planets from your old bedroom. The ceiling crack had gotten more noticeable recently. It was time to spackle and paint. In order to paint the ceiling, Mars and Jupiter had to go. If any of you wants them, they’re stuck to the top of the wooden ladder. Being in your old room - the "nursery" brought back so many memories. It’s where you lived together in various configurations. It’s where Lucy became a big sister and Lana was in her body cast and Lana and Allie made their god-awful Barbie messes. It was one yellow and then another yellow. It was lavender with bunny borders. The room still echoes with bedtime stories and plaintive requests for yet another drink of water.

Painting your old room made me happy until it made me so sad. Part of the time I couldn’t tell the difference. I’ve been going through some things in every room - organizing and purging. I feel like I’m saying goodbye to the house, although we have no plans to leave. Then I realized I’m not saying goodbye to the house. I’m saying goodbye to a time. Our time. All those years of you being little and sweet and young. And ornery and whiny and demanding. The relentless daily routines year after year seem such a blur now. In those years it seemed time passed quickly and slowly, simultaneously. How is that possible? Could it really be Halloween again? It seemed like we’d just done Halloween or one of the forty-eight birthday celebrations we had. Three kids times sixteen birthdays is forty-eight, but, really, it seemed like a lot more.

All this maudlin- mother- time can only lead one place. Worry. It’s me, after all. Did I do enough? Do you know what you need to know? I know your lives were good. Lana’s comment that she feels she had a perfect childhood was music to my ears, of course. I really do believe you have what you need to go wherever you may go. It’s all inside. You knew right from wrong, with few exceptions, by four years old. I trust in your abilities, your values and the love in your hearts. You’ll be fine, no matter what. It’s just that the painting project made me think of a couple things I want to say...

Painting is messy and hard, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Painting a ceiling is even more difficult than painting walls. It has to be done all at once. You can’t just do one wall at a time. Cover up anything you care about, and not just when you’re painting. It’s not easy to climb up and down ladders with rollers and brushes. You’re going to have little drips. Just don’t turn them into big blobs - especially big blobs that you step in and get all over the place. Clean up the little drips right away, so they don’t harden. You know this isn’t just about painting.

Don’t be afraid to break your own rules - even rules you previously believed in whole-heartedly. It’s all about adjusting to the present time and present circumstance. I’ve never painted the ceiling the same color as the walls. I did this time. It looks really pretty to have the cream color on the ceiling. Don’t get too attached to a formula. They’re always being discontinued or reformulated - like the cream colored paint. Wear a hat or you’ll have paint in your hair.
If there are cracks in one place, they’re probably in another location, as well. You can spackle. You can paint, but you can’t really cover cracks. You have to accept the cracks, even love them. Remember, covering cracks as you go along is maintenance. Covering them before you sell is fraud. Painting can be contemplative, even therapeutic. It requires almost more patience than I possess, but it’s tremendously satisfying to feel you’ve done a fine job. Like the way I feel about being your mother.

All my love,
Mumsicle