Involuntary Simplicity: Our Lady of Perpetual Construction

Welcome to Our Lady of Perpetual Construction. Services are not being held today, but we appreciate your continued prayers.

Our Lady of Perpetual Construction - not closed for renovations.

I do love HGTV.

Our house has been under some form of construction, or reconstruction, for over eleven years. That basically means that since we moved into this house on Lake View Avenue, we have been doing some form of home improvement. Throughout those years of Saturdays, and weekends, and vacations, Pete and I have been alternately covered in paint, in both chip and drip form, insulation fibers, hardwood splinters, cement, patio sand, dirt, horsehair plaster, and sadly, and most disgustingly, actual human feces in the inexorable journey to turn this sweet little white house into our Dream Home. 

I've liked this house since I first paid attention to it. It was one of the homes in my grandmother's neighborhood. The woman who lived here before me knew my father, and raised 6 children in this house. The rooms aren't big - they are now larger than Mrs. Conley knew them to be, as Pete and I have knocked out quite a few awkward walls, strange closets, odd heating elements to make way for what would be the ultimate vision of the space. 

Still, most of the rooms would be best described as "cozy." They are not cramped, due to the incredible blessing of 8 foot ceilings. There is lovely light in every room, and there is no dearth of places to nap, sit, read, or daydream on a porch, a front yard chair, a hammock. It is about 1300 square feet and according to our favorite carpenter, as he yells out due to his power-tool induced hearing loss, we "HAVE SQUEEZED OUT EVERY OUNCE OF LIVING SPACE" out of its little corner footprint.

And so, after all this time, after the literal blood, sweat, and many tears that construction projects can bring, we are almost done. Almost. So close. After two bathrooms, a back porch, a reconstructed sill, a new heating system, new plumbing, new wiring, walls put up and walls taken down, all that we need to do is finish The Kitchen. The best part, right? The heart of the home, the stuff HGTV dreams are made of.

But we've stopped.

Just stopped.

We finished opening up that room about two years ago. We ripped up the flooring, and put up most of the dry wall, and then...

Nothing.

All we need to do is plaster, floor, and cabinets. That's it.

But. we haven't. It hasn't been just that one of us is tired. Or busy. Or that we can't do it. It has been a mutual ending. A full and complete stop.

Why? I'm not exactly sure.

Is it Money? Admittedly, lately, that's been a factor in everything for us. Pete is making do with what he can, but we are still living mostly on a teacher's salary, which although nice, really only takes us through the month ahead. I'm not complaining. The shift has been a huge inspiration for this Involuntary Simplicity thing - without exaggeration, we have really learned what is, and what isn't really important to us because of the boundaries that lack of cash has forced upon us.

One of the first of many Friday night pizzas.

Is it Lack of Motivation? We know exactly what we want, we've had it measured, we've done countless mock ups, we've picked out the finishes, and we have the appliances. So, what is it?

Maybe the question is really, why? Why do we need to do it? Yes, we spend a lot of time in there. The kitchen. Most of our evenings with friends start and end in the vast cavern of this particular room. Is it pretty? No. But it is oddly comfortable. Do I worry about spills, or stains, or broken glasses? No. I don't. I can make a pretty nice dinner in there. The pizza is available every Friday night. And there's nothing in it we don't really need to have. 

Ugh.

Maybe it's because the reason we did most of this construction, is gone? My mom. When she was living in our house, the necessities of her safety and care inspired the new heating system, the downstairs bathroom, and the porch conversion, and inadvertently caused us to redo the heating, rewire the electrical, restructure the back yard. And now, she doesn't live with us. She helped us in so many ways, and now that she is no longer living in our home, maybe our inspiration is gone. Maybe, Eunie was the Muse. The Lady in Our House of Perpetual Construction? 

Or maybe, just finally, we, as a family, are just okay.

I still love seeing it everyday.

I'm not saying I wouldn't love a shiny new kitchen with a warm, rich floor, sparkling counter-tops, and pristine cabinetry. My Pinterest feed is lousy with it. But honestly, I don't need it. In preparation for the kitchen remodel, Pete and I have created the basic structure of how the room will be set up eventually, an L-shape of lower cabinets, allowing for seating at a peninsula. We have used a large temporary unfinished modular island with an overhang, ugly chairs, and a homemade set of shelves that house electronics, our house phone, snacks. We have paired down small appliances, and eliminated extra plates, glasses, pots and pans. Our kitchen runs very lean, and I like that it only takes me minutes to clean. I've hosted countless nights in this barren room, nights filled with a lot of laughter and love. The shiny and sparkling absolutely notwithstanding. Unnecessary to make things better.

Okay, maybe for Carrera marble. It is classically beautiful.

As a matter of fact, after last Thanksgiving, we hosted this insane dinner on Friday in which our table snaked out from the dining room into the makeshift kitchen, friends elbow to elbow, yelling across the room to pass the broccoli down the Z angle towards the living room. It was, and remains to be, a hilarious night, filled with great conversations, and fun memories and  and three generations of friendship. I wouldn't trade that night for all of the Carrera marble and hardwood floors in the world.

Things aren't always easy for us in the Kitchen. I can't tell you how many pairs of socks have holes in them from the nicks and dings in the unfinished floor. Or how many fibers of pink insulation made it into our pasta sauce before we semi-closed up the walls.  

And I have fervently prayed for strength over my kitchen sink, as I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and looked out over my pretty porch, patio, and backyard garden out of the new unfinished window over the rebuilt bulkhead. I have found that in Our Lady of Perpetual Construction strength, and peace, and maybe an odd sense of that, right now as ugly as it is, it's functioning, and it's okay, and that is good with me for right now.

The "construction as metaphor" is not lost on me, trust me.

Involuntary Simplicity: Or How I Stopped Trying To Do Everything. Step One, Yoga

Yoga Studio App

The Beginning: Ass Over Tea Kettle

I found myself at the bottom of my cement stoop, the seat of my pants soaking through the icy slush from the stair I had landed on, I could feel it just about to seep all the way through to my undies.

Great.

Now I would have to change. That would throw off my WHOLE schedule.

It took probably about thirty seconds, the fall, but then, I would have to go back in, change my pants, and probably my underwear - so new outfit altogether - dry out my bag or switch to a new purse, assess the damage to my lunch bag. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. I liked getting to school at least 20 minutes before the kids showed up. So clearly, not going to happen.

There I was, I had just fallen down my front stairs, slipping on the ice forming on the concrete, and I was already mentally shifting my schedule. I realized I would need to actually get up. But you know me - born to multitask!  Initiate vertical sequence - GO!

But, nope. Danskos sprawled across the white-spotted lawn, bag filled with student papers jammed underneath my right shoulder of my red riding hood jacket, my hood thrown back, my wet hair plastering my face, I was stuck on the stair, immobile, like some sort of distracted turtle in the chilling, seeping slush.  I would need some help. I tried to locate my phone, thinking that it had skittered just out of my hand as, uttering an elderly woman's "Ah-uh-ohhhh,"  I bounced wa-wup-boom down the brick and concrete of my front stairs. I found that turning my head ignited some sort of fuse of pain down my spine, exploding in a blinding flash just under my sacrum. In excruciating, teeth grinding pain, my fingers fumbled over the rapidly freezing puddle and found purchase on my phone, I dialed my husband who I had kissed goodbye just moments before. He answered.

"Um, hi. Can you come get me?"
He was a little dumbfounded, "Didn't you just walk out the door?"
"Yes."
"So, where are you?"
"At the bottom of the front stairs."

He opened the door, and looked down at my pitiful form, legs akimbo, left hand gripping the bottom of the iron railing. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked, always sympathetic. What he lacks in human feeling, he makes up for in strength. He picked me up, once again.

You see, this was not my first time fracturing my tailbone. When I tell the story(ies) to my students, they love when I use the word, "coccyx."

It's red because it's on fire!

But it was the last time I did it. Last school year, December 2014.

Strangely enough, that morning, I was returning to work. I had just recovered from the flu  and I was happy to be going off from home to see my 7th grade students. The kids are always the best part of teaching. Although the weather was low - a disgusting, driving sleet - my spirits were high.  (If any of you readers remember the weather of last school year in New England, you will remember the snows of January and February 2015, but let me tell you, December 2014 was no picnic either.)

As I left my house that morning, my thoughts were on the driving conditions, what I needed to get done, how much work I had missed, when was I going to be able to grocery shop, who would pick up my mom's prescription, how was I going to get Anna to the Winter Concert and get Pete to swim practice, when would Pete and I get to have sex, did I have homework, when could Judy and I meet for the Grammar Class, how could I meet with my mentee, what were we doing for Drama Club, and how I would greet the kids, or more accurately, how they would greet me when I had come back from my already panic-inducing two day absence, "Miss! Where have you been?" But, as I ended up, ass over tea kettle down at the bottom of my stairs, my only thought was: well, how the hell am I going to get everything done now?

That was my life in December of 2014 - a giant, never ending To Do list that only slowed itself ever-so-slightly on vacations. My husband was working only part-time, taking my place for the year as my mother's full-time caretaker. She has Alzheimer's Disease, and had lived with us, relatively successfully, for almost five years. However, when it was time for me to return to school in September, it was clear that her condition was declining, slowly, but steadily. Leaving her alone was an impossibility - Pete had been out of work, and it seemed to make sense.

It was hard on him, to be on call during the day while still trying to get contract work completed. But we made it work. I took every opportunity offered to me - mentoring a young teacher, creating district-wide assessments, teaching additional classes for the teachers, to make the extra money that I thought we would need for us, for my Mom, for the kids, for the house, for classes for my license. On most weekdays, I left at 6:45 am and came home at 5pm, 7pm, 8:30, 9. Weekends were meant for cleaning up, catching some time together, correcting, planning, and taking over Mom duties. My sister was trying to help by taking her on the weekends, but she also worked full time - I told her every other weekend was fine.

But on that morning, Pete had to call in the Calvary. The kids made their way together to middle school and my sister had to take my mom, as I ended up leaving the Emergency Room with scripts for Vicodin and muscle relaxants. I'm not a giant fan of either, so I tried to make it on Advil and not moving. And despite my Up And At'Em start to the day, I ended up out for the rest of the week, stuck on the couch, moving at about the same speed as my mother, when on her bazillionth trip to our bathroom (she forgot she had just gone), she asked sweetly, sympathetically, "Are you sick, my dear?"

I always answered with a small smile, to save the time and trouble of explaining again, for the bazillion-1 time, "Feeling better. Mimi. Thanks!"

Recovery was slow. Excruciatingly so, which was harder on my spirit than my body. Objects in motion not only tend to stay in motion, but I think they like to. Busy-ness helps you ignore the fact that something might be systematically wrong. But, I didn't think I was unusually busy. I just thought this was the way things went for everyone, stuck in the middle of life, with two kids, a husband, and a mom who needed me.

It wasn't that December day that changed my life, but it was that fall that started a change in me. It wasn't that I was suddenly imbued with the knowledge that I was covering up unhappiness in my life with activity and that, from here,  everything must change - it was that I simply thought, I don't want to be a (then) 41 year old woman who can't move. I can't be. Kids, especially middle school kids, can be kind, and helpful, and sweet one on one, but in a group, mob mentality takes over, and they will prey upon weakness. I could not be weak for too long in front of them. I grew up watching Jaws. I wouldn't let them smell blood in the water.

You're going to need a bigger boat.

On January 3rd, 2015, I started yoga. 5 am everyday, a full hour earlier than I normally woke up. It wasn't easy: I would stumble out of bed, my younger dog sleepily following me down the stairs. I do not know if she was commissioned by my husband to specifically supervise me on stairs, but she and I made our slow way to the living room, where I would learn poses, breathe, and try to slowly stretch my way to un-oldladiness.

Fay in Advasana (reverse corpse pose)

I used Gaiam, Inc. Yoga Studio app, sometimes crying through the workouts, but feeling better immediately after, throughout my long days losing the stiffness that would set in, getting stronger as I made my quiet way through the moves.

I found it on iTunes, but here is the website from the developer: http://yogastudioapp.com/. Without irony or emphasis, it was one of the best $3.99 I have ever spent.

I am not an ambitious athlete. I will not post photos of me in Wheel pose on Instagram. I will never push myself to do a handstand, and I don't need to perfect Lotus, but yoga has reminded me on a daily basis to slow down, breathe, and do something for myself, so that I can, like every other woman out there, help everyone else. Of course, that is really just the beginning of how my life has changed over the past year and a half.

But that is another story.