The Daily Brief

My house was built by a fairly reputable builder, about 20 years ago….but even the reputable builders and developers depend on 18-wheeler truckload quantities of standard light fixtures, faucets, appliances, cabinets, doors, windows and doorknobs to meet a budget and make a profit on the resulting houses. This may lend a depressing air of uniformity to those houses… all the neighbors whose houses were built at the same time as mine have the same louver doors in the closets, and the same doorknobs, even if the layout of the house vary considerably, they will have the same Formica kitchen countertops, and the same cheap-ass metal sink.

I, for one, do not fall into the trap set by the various glamorous magazines and TV shows, singing the praises of people who renovate some 70, or 100 or 170 year old domicile, and discover thereby all the joys of historic craftsmanship, and wonderful history, and solid woodwork worth preserving. I had friends (OK, they were the parents of Blondie’s good friend) in Ogden, Utah, who through sentimentality found themselves trapped into rehabbing an 1895 Italianate 3-story townhouse on 5th Street in Ogden, which turned into “The House From Hell”. Not only had it been built by the lowest bidder (no fine original woodwork there!) but any existing historical bits had been trashed by previous owners, to the point where the only interesting relics they uncovered consisted of copies of the local newspaper, circa 1942, which had been used to insulate a clumsily added 2nd storey kitchen addition. They wound up hating the whole place with a passion, admitting that if they only knew at the beginning what they knew at the end, they would have gutted the entire place, top to bottom inside the 2ft. thick brick shell, and rebuilt it from scratch. Indeed, they only were happy, once they unloaded the brick albatross in favor of a nice 1920ies bungalow in the 15th Street area, which hardly needed any work at all. Historic houses… pheh!

There is an up side in my settling for dull suburban conformity— all those various house fittings are standard, and easily swapped for something off the shelf at Lowe’s or Home Depot, or the shelves of the local hardware store, which alters not nor fails me ever. And it also has the side-benefit of being— even though it is usually the most inexpensive (read “cheapest!”) always an aesthetic step up; the new fixtures, faucets and knobs always look a thousand times better than what they replaced, which makes me wonder if the fittings installed by the really low-rent builders are made out of soda straws and heavy-gage tinfoil.

Even what the builders installed around here has a limited life, and I have been able to track the trajectory of replacement among my neighbors by the rubbish put out for the semi-annual bulk trash pickup. After about twenty years, most everyone has had to replace the privacy fences, the stove and dishwasher, the hot-water heater. The wall-to-wall carpets have been ripped out and replaced with new carpet, tile, parquet. Sunrooms, porches, entryways, terraces and decks have been replaced or added. Sinks and toilets and cabinets have been replaced here and there, and one of my neighbors remarked, as I was admiring the ambitious pile of fence staves and 2 x 4s that was scheduled to be transformed into a new fence over the Labor Day holiday
“Wait until you replace the kitchen sink…it is such a lightweight piece of shit, you can pick up the whole thing and hold it with two fingers.”
“Really….” I said, thoughtfully. Come to think on it, the kitchen sink and countertop were the last things in my kitchen that I had not already re-done, and they were the one jarring note remaining, in a house that was boringly white and beige when I first moved in. Now the concrete floor was stenciled like Tuscan tile, the cabinets were the color of cream, and the cabinet door and drawer fronts navy-blue, to match the collection of Spanish and Greek blue and white pottery. I sewed curtains out of blue and white striped fabric, and replaced the beige stove, dishwasher and oven hood with a better grade of plain white appliances. I would have liked to replace the countertops and sink… something in hand-painted Italian tile or maybe corian with an integral sink. I would also like a gas-fired Aga range, a small villa in the California wine country, and a two door sportster Jag, in racing green with nickel trim, but I know damn well I will not get any of them until the book sells a great many more copies… so on the next trip to Home Depot I check out the kitchen sinks.
“That one,” says one of the unexpectedly present and helpful sales staff, “An excellent sink. Enamel over steel, but it weighs 300 hundred pounds… now this one… same size, good quality— cast fiberglass with a porcelain finish. Thirty pounds, and about half the price.”
Even assuming I could round up enough assistance to get a 300 pound sink out of the back of the VEV, I can’t see replacing the el cheapo tin sink with something that much heavier. I imagine the poor old unreinforced kitchen cabinets that have supported it lo these many years collapsing utterly under the strain of this burden. I take note of the make and model of the white, cast fiberglass sink, and wander off to the paint department, to order a gallon of paint specially formulated for garage floors. This paint can be used for other areas…. And they can mix it up for you in any color you like.
(To be continued)

Creek Way runs along the crest of the low ridge at the top end of the development, the first half an easy level— I have hit my stride now. Some houses— they are larger than the garden cottages, most of them two story houses, now show faint yellow squares of light, leaking through blinds and curtains in the upstairs windows. Many of these houses have pools, and elaborate decks and play equipment in the back. Many of those with the most elaborate gardens and decks back on a narrow watercourse that runs all the way down through the heart of the neighborhood, ducking under the roads by way of a concrete culvert. There is nearly always a trickle of water in it, and the banks are supposed to be mown by the city. I think it would make a lovely shoe-string park, winding down the shallow slope, with a jogging and bicycle path along side, and places where you could sit and watch the jewel-winged dragonflies flit in and out. Heavy rains have brought down seedlings from gardens, which have planted themselves in places along the watercourse— reeds and ruellias and gladioli, mostly. Some of the householders have even extended their gardens and tree plantings beyond their fences, or just keep the grass mown of their own volition, but otherwise it grows as tall as it would have grown in the tall-grass prairie, or to the level of the privacy fences.

I think on what a lovely little park it would make, like the Lichtenthaler Allee, in Baden-Baden, a narrow little park on the bank of a river, where you would walk all though the city, and look across the river at the splendid gardens in the back of all the houses on the other side. William thinks I should get myself elected to the Neighborhood Association and campaign for exactly that, but at this point the Neighborhood Association is mostly interested in cell-phone patrolling in the wee hours and getting speed-bumps installed along my street and Creek Way. No one is particularly interested in the labor of building a park along city drainage. To be fair, they are not interested in pissing contests over paint colors, parking cars on the street, or exhuberantly over-ornamenting their gardens with pink flamingos, seasonal banners and statues of saints with lighted halos. Many of my neighbors are military, or retirees, and their toleration is large, even enduring my next-door neighbor who had her house painted pepto-bismol pink. We just shaded our dazzled eyes until it faded; she was nearly blind and shortly afterwards moved to be with her daughter in Chicago, and the next owners mercifully painted it beige. The only offense against the standards of suburbia is letting weeds grow as large as rose-bushes, and not fixing broken windows.

On the other side of the culvert, the hill begins to rise steeply, in a long looping curve, and keeping the same pace as I did on the flat is an effort. The sky is a little paler in the east, but it is still night among the trees along Creek Way, and a long way between streetlights. It would be darker still, but for so many houses leaving the porch and front lights on, a string of human-scale lights all along the even setbacks of the house fronts. A number of them are left on to illuminate the flags… American flags, mostly, some Texas state flags, the lone white star on a blue field above a red and white stripe. A couple of houses have a little blue starred banner, denoting military service hanging in a window, and many cars sport the small magnetic banners, yellow or tricolor; “We Support Our Troops”.

I pass the president of the Neighborhood Association’s house, just a little short of the top of the hill; his house, and the house across Creek Way seem to be in serious, toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano competition for garden decoration. Banners and windcatchers, colorful hanging pots and planters, ornaments, plaques, and statuary, topped off with seasonal lights and ornaments. Black cats and scarecrows and skeletons for Halloween, deer and Santas and sleighs for Christmas, and so on throughout the year. Even Labor Day gets some ornament; surely Martha Stewart has a lot to answer for, and to more than the criminal justice system.

Here at the top of the hill is another intersection. There is a limestone entrance gate, right by the Latter-Day Saints complex of classrooms and meeting halls. I turn right again, running downhill for the first time in 20 minutes, heading back down towards the oldest part of the neighborhood, where the houses were more “L” shaped, and set on wider lots. After four blocks, I turn right again, and run a zig-zagging course that takes me across the creek again, and brings me out on my own street and past my house, while the sky turns a clear pale turquoise. A few shreds and scraps of pink to pink and gold cloud contrast vividly, brighter the closer to the horizon they are. This is my second lap, another zig-zag course, another zig-zagging course, half in streets of tiny garden cottages, half in the larger, and older houses, which have been much improved and added onto, with ornamental gates, and sunrooms. This is where I often see the Little Friend of all the Cats, the white and grey rabbit, and the school-teacher who walks Goliath the giant Papillion, who is about the size of a border collie— enormous for the breed.

The sky is entirely light by the time I finish the second lap, and go uphill again on my street for the final lap. I pass children walking towards the school by now. Cars are pulling out of driveways, and my neighbor the roofer, and the pool landscaper two roads up are already rolling; they have work to do before it gets too hot. But I have been jogging for nearly an hour now, and my tee-shirt is nearly soaked— it’s hot enough for me, even before the sun is entirely up. Past my house, while next-door’s little dachshund barks at me with soprano enthusiasm. Birds yammer in chorus in the tallest trees, and out in the green belt, the great marble cross put up by the congregation of St. Helena catches the first sunlight. We are fenced around with churches, in this neighborhood— not just the Catholics at St. Helena, but the LDS, and the Episcopal church at the opposite corner, and the Lutherans a bare block away.

It seems sometimes there is something for everyone to dislike, in a suburb like this. Somewhere on the cultured coasts, scholars and the artistic set are painting it in sterile and stultifying shades. Somewhere in Europe, we are put down for vulgarity and religiosity, lack of real culture and 75 different cheeses, and having the temerity to own our own homes, and work for our own businesses. Mullahs everywhere in the Middle East must be gibbering incoherently about the women who own their own homes, and dare to go jogging alone of a morning, not to mention spoiling our little dogs and allowing great marble crosses to dominate the green belt. And the thing that chaps them the most, that galls them right down to what passes for a soul?

We don’t care. We don’t give a rats’ ass. IDGRA rules, and we have the nerve to be content.

And I’ll run again tomorrow.

My first place, aside from rooms in various barracks, was a tiny studio apartment in the R housing area, close to the POL gate at Misawa AB, Japan: a long, narrow room with three largish windows in each segment: bedroom, living room, and kitchen. The bedroom segment was screened off from the rest by a 3/4th wall, and a narrow counter with cupboards underneath divided the remainder. A tiny, windowless bathroom— tub, sink and toilet all together in a tiled cubicle was behind a narrow door off the kitchen. In the summer mushroom-like fungus grew in the corners, and in the winter, the bathtub tap sprouted a stalactite of ice.

The windows gave onto a view of three tiny houses on the other side of the driveway where I parked my little green Honda mini, and the fields and treeline along the road towards the POL gate, a view entirely snow-covered for the first months that I lived there, a vista of white snow and blue shadows, and the cold crept in through the single-pane windows, especially around the area closest to the kitchen sink, in which I was supposed to bath my baby daughter.
“It’s just too chilly, I’m afraid she would catch pneumonia.” I said to the visiting nurse practitioner, who said thoughtfully,
“What about the bathroom tub?”
“It’s warm enough, especially if I fill the tub with hot water… but it’s a Japanese tub. Square, but deep…would it be safe? It would be pretty awkward, I’d have to kneel on the floor and it’s an awful reach. I’d be afraid of dropping her. ”
“When in Rome,” said the nurse, “Take your baths together. Get into the water, and then hold her, safe.”

The more I thought about it, the more it looked safer than bathing her in a shallow sink, in front of a drafty window. The metal bathtub was a deep square thing, a comfortable fit for an adult to sit cross-legged, filled to chest level with steaming hot water, which even on cold winter days raised the temperature of the little bathroom to a comfortable level. I would line the baby carrier with towels, another wrapped around my daughter, then undress and step into the tub first. Kneeling in the water, I could lean over and pick her up, then sink back into shoulder-deep hot water, cradling her head above water level with one hand, and the rest of her propped on my knees. It felt much more secure, and much warmer, bathing together Japanese-fashion, close together in the square bathtub, my daughter gurgling and looking up at me with trusting adoration, eyes so dark blue they looked like purple pansies. Sometimes I would just hold her face above water, my hands cupping the back of her head, and let the pink and froglike little body float freely. She splashed and kicked, utterly secure in the confidence that I would not let anything happen to her, that she would be born up by the water and my hands.

At the end of her first year we went back to the States, and bathtime reverted to something a little more American Standard, and at the end of that second year, I had to leave her with Mom and Dad and go to Greenland. Being a hardship tour, a remote sentence to very nearly the end of the earth, Air Force personnel were permitted a month of leave halfway through the year. It was the Air Forces’ way of keeping us from going rock-happy, and of helping us maintain some sort family life, but it was Mom’s idea that my daughter should be taught to swim. Having read all too many sad accounts of toddlers and small children falling into unguarded and unfenced water, she and Dad had practically to padlock the gate to the pool enclosure at Hilltop House.

“There’s a mother and child swim class at the Y, on the same days that I am teaching stained-glass” She told me, almost the first moment that I was home, while Blondie clung to me like a limpet, crowing “MommyMommyMommy!”
“But she’s only two and a half,” I said, “Isn’t that too young?”
“No, it’s a special class for babies and toddlers; the instructor teaches the mothers, and the mothers teach the children. Apparently, the younger they start, easier it is for them.”
I would have to take that on faith, I decided on the first day of the class; ten or twelve mothers standing chest-deep in the shallow end, each with a baby or small child— the oldest a girl of three or so, as fair as Blondie, although her mother was older than I, and as dark as Mom. She was the most assured about leaping off the side of the pool, landing in her mothers’arms with an air of trustful affection— obviously, she had been to swim lessons before— but all the rest clung to their mothers with a desperate grip.
“When you are only two feet tall,” allowed the kindly instructor, “The whole pool is the deep end.”

The first and most essential lesson was to teach them how to hold their breath, and hold it on cue. We stood in a circle, holding our children upright in the water, our hands holding them under the arms, a little away from us, also chest-deep in the water
“Ready?” said the instructor, “One-two-three—blow, and duck!”
Counting one—dip the child a little, and bring up—two—dip again—three—dip a third time, blow a breath on their faces, and quickly duck them all the way under the water for a couple of seconds. The natural reaction of the babies with the air blown on their faces the first time was to close their eyes. Hopefully repetition of the dip-dip-dip-blow-duck! sequence would have them holding their breath, although at least half of the junior members of the class that first day came up from their first time, howling with astonishment and shock. The instructor coached us to calm the children and then do it again, and again, until that first lesson was learned. That would be the start of each lesson, reinforcing the cue to hold breath. The instructor pointed out how they very youngest of the babies caught on to it the fastest, having perhaps some atavistic memory of amniotic fluid. And the fair-haired little girl hardly needed that coaching at all, but paddled confidently from the side of the pool to her mother, standing four or five feet away—practically an Olympic champion, in comparison.

At the end of the second or third lesson, the instructor brought out a pair of floatee-cuffs for each child or baby.
“It will give them an idea of what it is like to float freely.” Even with the floatee-cuffs on their upper-arms, most of the babies and toddlers still clung to their mothers with desperate fervor— only the older girl and Blondie took it in stride. Blondie, full of confidence once she realized that the floatee-cuffs did indeed hold her as well above water, determinedly wriggled free and away from me, heading toward the deeper end. There was a class of older children there, going off the diving board, a great deal of excited shrieks and splashing, much more fun than a group of babies clinging to their mothers. This was my first realization that my daughter was almost entirely fearless, in the water and practically everywhere else— it would not be a surprise that she swam like a fish by the age of seven, and nonchalantly dove off the high-board by eight. But this was early days, yet, and the other little girl still swam better.
“Your daughter swims very well,” I said enviously to her mother, as we were all getting dressed again in the locker room, that day.
“I’m the housekeeper,” She replied, “Her mother works.”
I hadn’t contemplated that— after all Mom looked nothing like Pippy, Alex or I, with blond to light-brown sugar colored hair and blue eyes. But still. I thought of the little girl, leaping off the side of the pool, trusting and affectionate. Not her mother. The housekeeper.
Oh dear. I worked too…. But at least I could teach my daughter to swim.

The exterior walls are completed; the masons took a couple of weeks to built them all the way up. The house basically a square, with a deep verandah all the way around. The posts which will support the outer edge of the veranda are all in place, and Dad is drilling holes in the header beams which will top the masonry wall. The window and door frames are all in place. The rafters are due to be installed this month, and the roofers will come in September. Once the roof is underway, they can start with the interior walls and the drywalling— Dad is not going to do it all again himself again, it was boring enough the first time around. He is going to do a roof over part of the verandah himself, so he can set up a workshop there to do the fine woodwork for the interior. And Mom has picked out the kitchen cabinets, thanks to her friend who is going to design the kitchen for her.
We’re on schedule to celebrate Christmas this year, in the new house!