The imperfect home
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- May 25, 2018
- 1562
Houses are a patchwork of plaster and boards, weird angles and tucked-away spaces. We inhabit them, moving through their spaces on an everyday journey. We take for granted their solidness and rail against their flaws.
Yesterday I hit my toe on a board that separates the original living room from the laundry and bathroom wing. At one time our small house had one bathroom with three kids, so we ripped out a window to make a doorway and at our pace added a laundry room and bath. The doorway into this new space needed to bridge the old to the new, so a temporary board was attached to smooth the way. That board is still there.
I don’t hate this board. Most days I don’t notice it. When I do something dumb — like trip over it — then my mind goes all sorts of places.
“Why is this board still here?” I’ll yell to my husband as he flips down the magazine he’s paging through to look at me. The smile on his face infuriates me until it doesn’t. The board is smooth and kind of cool-looking, and like I said, I never notice it’s there until I do.
There is much to fix in our house: bits and corners that are unfinished, rough hidden drywall edges, raw wood, and sharp tile edges. There are several spots upstairs that need patching from minor leaks and painting that needs tending to. I wish I knew a good painter because I dislike painting.
We do most of the upgrading to our house by ourselves. My husband learned to do things on his own through trial and error, reinventing himself over and over until he became a master of repairing.
But something happened, though, as we got a bit older and less inclined to worry if something wasn’t “perfect” in the house. I knew that if given the chance to take a ride down back roads or paint a wall, I would always choose the ride.
We’d look at each other on a Friday night and knew we were hungry for our favorite restaurant, instead of working in the garden. To work on that garage project or hang together inside and watch movies while sitting on the floor on a blanket? Movies every time.
Don’t get me wrong. The work gets done. It just doesn’t get done as fast. It may take one year for me to finish my writing room upstairs because we went thrifting on weekends or I had lunch with my friends on a Saturday.
I’m not mad about it because life is way too short. To not have the fun and drama-free freedom to drop everything and go? No way. Our jobs are overwhelming during the week, and I’m doing good to get my yard mowed.
Most of the time we move through life with our own edges unsanded, exposed, and over time they become weathered with knowledge because we’ve let them age well.
It’s a knowledge that says your yard doesn’t have to be weed-eated to death and that a few weeds are fine, that those walls will eventually get painted and that I’ll move all my trinkets I’ve gathered and arrange them to my liking in my own writing space. It means that one day George will fix that darned board or maybe he won’t, and that’ll be fine.
Finished edges and smooth surfaces don’t equal happiness, and though it can be hard, my life is immensely pleasurable. And especially to me, knowing that I have unfinished things in my house means one thing: That I’m living.