Posted March 15, 2008

When my father died, I'd told Jim I'd like to move into his house. We kicked the idea around, but in the end we decided to try renting it instead. 401 had two strikes against it. We'd outgrown it, after some thirty years of accumulating stuff, and it had a wet basement that kept my allergies in a constant state of excitation. However, Jim had his most important stuff in that basement, a wood shop and a pottery shop, and even if we converted the garage at Daddy's to a workroom, there wouldn't have been room for both. And 401 had one enormous thing in its favor - a wonderful old claw-footed tub and the lovely (if 1930's small) bathroom Jim had refinished around it.

When the tenants moved on we briefly considered selling the property to a neighbor who wanted to buy it. But as we were preparing the yard for its first mowing that Spring, we reopened the discussion about moving. Jim still wasn't enthusiastic about moving to "suburbia," but bless his heart he could see how much it meant to me. And we'd bought a rental property down the street from us at 401 since we thought about it last, and Jim suggested that he could move the pottery shop to Daddy's garage and the wood shop to the basement of the rental, only renting out the living quarters.

He imposed a dramatic stipulation - I'd have to do the painting. I've always hated to paint, and I'm pretty sure he thought he was giving himself an out, expecting me not to get the work done.

However, I managed to pull it off. My old bedroom upstairs was to become my study. It had always been a delicate lavender; I repainted it in a slightly greyer and more adult pale purple, Sherwin Williams' "Silver Peony" to be exact. Then I asked Jim what color he wanted his office.

"The blue of the study," he said.

I cracked up. We'd painted the study electric blue when we moved into the house, over his mother's energetic protests. She confidently predicted we'd be sick of such a strong color in two weeks, but we both still loved it, some 30 years later.

"How about the living room?" I asked.

"The same," he answered without hesitation.

The house is sort of dark, so I only used the most vivid shade in the living room/dining room, but I wound up painting the whole common areas downstairs some shade of our blue, which turned out to be in the "Capri Blue" family. It's an interesting effect, and it went a long way to warming Jim up to the house. It's sort of an ionized sky blue, like that magical light just after a rainstorm, and while many people wouldn't want to live with it, it's evoked comments from everyone who walks into the house.

After I painted, we put down a fake-stone-tiles roll vinyl in a sort of a sandy beige color. It's very natural looking, and has another selling point that Vernice was quick to pick up on the first time she saw it. "What wonderful flooring!" she gushed. "You can't see dirt on it!"

With that done, we took up the 40 year old beige wall-to-wall carpet and in the living room/dining room area, put down wood laminate there and in our bedroom. It was tedious work, and cutting the pieces was dusty and noisy, and Jim gave me a hard time about the effort and my infatuation with the wood look, but I think he was as proud of it as I was. One night he couldn't sleep, and he snuck over here and finished the bedroom by himself. The next morning, with uncharasteristic excitement, he brought me over and made me cover my eyes while he led me into the bedroom to show off his work.

We were able to start moving over after that. I never really got along with my mother while she was alive, but moving over here has helped me let go of the conflicts and honor her loving heart. The plantings in the yard, especially, are something that she began and that I can cherish and continue.

I'd thought the move an opportunity for my relationship with Jim to continue to grow and improve. It would have given me the space I didn't have anymore at the old house to take care of myself, and that would have let me grow even closer to Jim and smooth the transition to suburbia for him. Instead it saw him through his final illness, and it was his parting gift to me. I lost him in the house I lived in when I first met him, but with his help I'd made it my own.

By Ruby Jung. All rights reserved to the story. I made the background and you're welcome to copy it and use it.