Little Paper Gift

Yesterday was the day I fell apart.

I hear it happens about four or five days after moving, so we were right on target. Yesterday was the day I couldn't find things in boxes (and the boxes were towering and overwhelming) and I kept flipping the wrong light switches and opening the wrong cabinets looking for things. By the end, I felt pretty lost in this house.

Yesterday was the day we dug into a simple-looking crack on the dining room ceiling and watched a huge chunk of plaster fall free and crash to the floor. The previous inadequate repair disintegrated and what should have been a simple tape-and-spackle became A Problem.

Yesterday was the day the towel racks were in all the wrong places, the master bath was the stupidest design ever in the history of stupid designs (and filthy, to boot), the half bath was totally devoid of character or charm, and the stupid reglazed bathtub let water get on the floor because somebody at some point hung the shower curtain rod five inches too high.

Yesterday was the day I had to leave the basement lights on to run the dryer because the wiring there defies all logic.

Yesterday, we got the first installment bill on the new siding, the final bill on the refinished hardwood floors, the final bill on the grandfather clock moving, the first electric bill, and a mysterious bill from the dentist that insurance should have covered but apparently didn't. Yesterday was also the day DH's company started talking about significant budget cuts.

Yesterday was a lot of other little, totally annoying things, and yesterday was the day the master bath toilet overflowed, flooded the room, and left a big brown stain on the kitchen ceiling.

Yesterday was the day I final

ly sank to the floor and sobbed, wondering what in the living hell we were thinking to sell our beautiful, perfect little house with no problems for this money pit, and how we were ever, ever going to get out of this mess in one piece.

And yesterday, while unpacking my childhood dollhouse furniture to give to my daughter from a box that hadn't been opened in at least 15 years, I found this.

That's my dad. I guess he's about seven or eight years old. The dog is Mugsy, who was much beloved and ver

y sweet from everything I've ever heard. Dad is playing the harmonica in his black cowboy boots

 and patched jeans--he grew up the son of a B&O Railroad worker without much money in a blue-collar neighborhood--and Mugsy is singing in the wonderful way dogs do when someone plays the harmonica. Especially when that someone is a seven year old boy.

I smiled. I thought about my dad, who died nine years ago at the age of 60 despite a life of healthy living and working out. And I realized that we'll survive this and we're going to love this old house, and that someday the ceiling stain and the stupid electrical work and the knees-up-your-nose half bath design will all make me laugh. We just need to press through.

It was a little paper gift, in so many ways. Today, it gets a frame and a place in my kitchen. My new, big kitchen with the island and the table and the French doors that I love.