Part 11

The seven beat transition

Another strip mall morning along the side of some highway somewhere in some other part of Denver.   Find a corner seat by the window so I can see the bike.  Pull out my laptop.  Sit down and set the scattered thoughts to the wind.   Tack hard when nothing immediately comes.

Music provides structure that allows the mind to anticipate not only the ending of a phrase, but also when a of new phrase will begin.    In a way it allows the mind to settle within a cognitive womb of safety, finding a quiet solace within the musical structure.   And once inside the safety of that structure,  inspiring contemplation.  Like sitting by a stream, the mind becomes free to wander.

Or not.    Music spins this magic for most, but we all have a small handful of other things that allow us to relax, and usually for most of us it involves keeping the hands busy so that the mind can wander.    Someone said somewhere that 

    The Hand is The Cutting Edge of the Mind.

And I believe this is true.   For me that relaxation comes working on things around the house.   20 years of it in Santa Clara while the kids were growing up, and we had dogs, Nalla and Annabelle.  

I rebuilt that house on Vargas.    Then these past four years in Bandon the house on 12th Street.    Floors, yard, pavements, fencing.  Painting, rebuilding everything.   

I believe the house on Vargas has now been sold to a new family, and I have not lived there for the past 4 years, but when I just went back to say goodbye to it, I found a slat on the picket fence in the front yard had gone missing, so even though the house was no longer mine, I went down to Home Depot and bought a couple of slats, some wood screws,  and some white spray paint and went back to the house and replaced the broken slat.   I built that fence with Michelle's dad the week that Jana was born.   It's my fence, even though I do not own it any more.   As is the house.  Every square inch of that house is a memory for me.

The new people had not moved in yet, so I walked around the house and around the backyard.    Michelle - in her way of listening to the realtor -  had the back shed removed, where an apple tree had once stood, and that I had to cut down to put the shed there because that is where Michelle wanted it.    I had an apple shaped metal pot holder tacked to the front of that shed for many years, in honor of the tree that had to come down.

Michelle also had the MudRoom knocked down between the house and the garage, the garage that I had turned into a playroom for the kids for many years, and that I then had turned into a bedroom that Mara called her own for many other years.

A lot of the new house that was mine was pretty,  and it looked like a different house is some ways, but you could tell it was still my house.  The brick sidewalks.  The fencing.  The garden beds, the patio room, etc.    I once told Jana that over 20 years that there was not a square inch of that house that I did not work on at some point, and that I could tell her the hours at Home Depot thinking about that square inch and wondering what I was going to do, until a solution finally came to me.

Maybe I am the only one in the world that can look at that house and remember all that work.  A labor of love, surely, all of it.   I tried to explain to Michelle once that even though we discussed all of the changes to that house before they were made, that her memories of the house were the logistic decisions made over the years.  Mine were more tactile, as once those decisions were made, it was for me the many hours to carry those decisions out.   Swinging the hammer, driving the screws, laying the bricks, the cuts and bruises and the various visits the emergency room when I made stupid decisions, all to make that house into what  we wanted it to look like, so that it was a place where we could raise our family.

All my manual labor, that is, except for the painting and all the great gardening Michelle did over the years.    One year she got it into her head to paint the entire inside of the house and she became a painting maniac that summer.   It was awesome.

Also, even though I built the garden beds and the arbor above them for her, it was Michelle that was out there every day during all those summers tending to her gardens.  All those vegetables and flowers, and the endless tomatoes.   It was beautiful to watch her work, just as it is beautiful to watch anyone when they are in their private space, doing something that they love.

I give her credit for a lot of things, especially this one most important thing. Every night.  Every night she would read with each kid before bedtime while they were growing up.   the most amazing thing in the world.  That in itself made her a great mom for me.   I could almost cry in thanks, just thinking about it now.