Paint (10.30.24)
When life lays it on thick.
Our house is over 100 years old. When we moved in, the fireplace mantel was unsightly and in need of restoration. Our carpenter recommended that we strip the paint on it. What we did not expect was that there was so much paint – nearly half an inch laid on by a century of occupants – that it would take him days to remove it all.
Gordon carefully taped off that section of the living room, working around the curved plaster ceilings and herringbone oak floors, and set to it. Along the way he reported on past color schemes – jade green, blue, brown, as if progress was marked by time-traveling backwards through the history of Benjamin Moore color books. Most remarkable was the Pepto-Bismol pink, which was disconcerting because we subsequently discovered that same color beneath the paint in almost every room of the house, perhaps from when Barbie lived here.
Other than “Anna Sebastian”, I haven’t penned one of these posts in a while. Some of you are aware that my family has been undergoing medical difficulties and we had to put life on pause while we figure that out. Any writings you may have seen recently stem from a productive writing spell in early summer: that pipeline has been firing on autopilot since July. Several times, I sat down and tried to write while our health crisis unfolded. Since writing is therapeutic for me, I thought perhaps it would help me find my footing.
But I found it hard to write. I could not even express my feelings, much less find anything to say.
I considered poetry - something I wrote a lot of in my teens – as a way of getting the pain out. Instead, I re-read many of my old posts for comfort. These captured glimpses of the person I hoped I would one day become. I realized these hopes not only remained unchanged, but were strengthened despite our circumstances.
Dan Castle, a 9/11 survivor, recently reflected on Frankl’s insight that the one thing you cannot take away from a person is how they choose to confront their circumstances. It reminded me of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring”, in which Frodo shares with Gandalf how he wishes the events of the book had not happened during his time. Gandalf replies “so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
As for the mantel, after three (symbolic?) days, Gordon reported a breakthrough. Beneath all those layers of paint – some ugly, some pleasant, applied with all sorts of intentions, over much time and in a multitude of circumstances, was the original mantel – a beautiful block of cherry with a lovely light grain, perhaps taken from the surrounding woods cleared to build our neighborhood in 1910. It remained heavy, solid, and strong.
I believe suffering has purpose, that sometimes stripping away everything – slowly, painfully, inexorably – is the only way to reveal what is at the core.
For if our joy fails in suffering, then how deep and how true is our joy?
J
Rom 5:3-5