Painting {day eighteen}

I spent the last month or so painting crisp white over dark wood. Nothing fancy – just the trim in the bathroom and the hallway upstairs.

After the boys were in bed and the house was quiet I’d glide the  roller up and down the bathroom door, the sound of paint sticking wet against wood blending with the rhythm of little boys breathing. Bedroom doors cracked, the glare of the work lamp cast a sliver of light like a motionless lighthouse strobe across their wood floors.

When Brad was home for a few days he peeked around the bathroom door, watching as I inched along the baseboard, paintbrush in hand.

“I’m not sure this is the best time for this project,” he observed. It was true. He was gone most of January and early February, sitting hour after hour next to his dad’s bed in the hospice. Yet, there was also something exactly right about painting right then, even after a long day of work and kid-shuttling, dinner dishes and laundry and errands.

“Well,” I answered, straightening to my knees and gesturing to the can of paint, the half-finished baseboard, “all I know is that this I can control. I know exactly how this will turn out.”

And so I painted, late into the quiet night.

Do you have an unusual activity that brings you solace and the opportunity for contemplation?