Dawn Byrne

“My mom'll be disappointed if we move back to the old neighborhood, Joe,” I said to my husband.

I was nine when Dad died. Mom had struggled as a single mother raising me and my four siblings. When crime began to move in, she transitioned our family to a safer area.

Now, I stood in the hall of our second floor apartment less than a mile from Mom. Stretching my back, I leaned on the railing, scanning our simple living room, kitchen and bedroom.

“We won't have to live there long,” Joe replied, organizing his tools as he boxed them up for transport. “My aunt said we could rent to buy. We don't even need a down payment.”

Guilt tainted my excitement of being a first time homeowner. But I'd never seen Joe's handsome face so full of drive. Was I choosing between my husband and mother?

A 28-year-old widow, Mom had been left with a disabled son and mother to add to her tragic situation. She stood poised as a super heroine in my mind as she continued to care for my brother.

“We could just stay here a little while longer to save up for a bigger apartment,” I suggested to Joe.

He waved his arm towards our living room stacked almost to the ceiling with baby gifts from my showers. “Dawn, we need more room. Once the baby comes, we won't be able to walk around in here.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, I think our landlady wouldn't like hearing a baby crying at night.”

That patient woman downstairs had allowed us to bring our cat when Joe and I moved in two years before, even though she initially said “No.” She took a chance renting to a young couple with no references. After late rent payments, a clogged toilet, cat urine and our squeaky bed, adding a crying baby seemed too cruel.

“How am I going to help you with all those repairs, and take care of a newborn?”

“We'll be okay,” Joe coaxed. “I can do the work myself.”

“Joe, I don’t want to bring my mother's first grandchild home to an unfinished place to live? And she'll worry too much about our safety.” But waddling into our living room, I began to see the opportunity of a larger home as providential. “I guess we don't have a choice.”

I didn't want Mom to think I disrespected her earlier efforts by agreeing to take the house. However, she had taught me to put my husband first when making a decision.

Joe kissed me. Once more, he assured: “It won't be for long, I promise.”

Hauling a huge belly into my mother's home after one of my last prenatal appointments, I told Mom about our decision. Lowering myself into her chaise lounge chair, I elevated my swollen legs. Mom believed that anxiety wasn't good for a pregnant woman or her baby, so yes, I played hard on her sympathies.

She handed me a glass of lemonade and asked, “What's the address?”

That question rocked me. The thought of her visiting us had never crossed my mind. She had stopped by the apartment only once, since Joe worked two jobs and I had worked a crazy shift doing overnights. But now that I'd be leaving my job to care for the baby, Mom would surely visit.

At that time, I wasn't sure of the answer to her question. I knew how to get there, but hadn't written down the exact number and street. Mom didn't press me for more information than what I gave: “A big drug store's on the corner.”

Two weeks later, past my due date to have the baby, I happily scraped off old living room wallpaper in the house we called our own. Despite my condition, I wanted to help my over-achieving husband with home improvements.

I dabbed at perspiration under my glasses as Joe worked on the testy front door.

Throwing his hands up he said, “I'm gonna work on the bathroom.” He shuffled upstairs

mumbling a list of tools and materials to purchase on his next trip to the hardware store.

A half hour later, he came back down and put his face close to mine. With a twinkle in his eye, he whispered, “Your mom's outside walking around.”

“Yeah, yeah, right.” I wound up to playfully slap him.

“Dawn, I'm serious.” Joe nodded to the window. “She's out front looking around right now.”

My sudden nausea wasn't from morning sickness. “Did you give her the address?”

The way he said “No,” made me put down my scraper. I couldn't believe her homing instinct in finding her very pregnant chick.

I hid behind the wall between the door and front window. I didn't want her to see the place until it was perfect, at least on the inside.

Mom smiled the whole time I watched her wondering the sidewalk in front of our home, hesitating at each house on our block. How did she know from the sketchy information I gave her where to find us? We didn't even own a car parked out front to give her a clue. How long had she been canvassing the neighborhood? I couldn't let her continue walking around in the heat.

I came out of hiding like a little child and called out the front window. “Mom.”

She beamed and came up to the screen.

“Mom, the door worked this morning but I'm not sure if I can open it now. I'm sorry. You might have to climb through here.” We laughed. With Mom pushing from the outside, and Joe pulling from inside, the door opened.

My feeling of pride in being a first time homeowner returned when Mom took in a deep breath and said, “The woodwork in here is beautiful. What a cozy house.” She handed me a box of donuts and a bag of soft pretzels, our first house warming gifts, and perfect for a pregnant woman.

“Mom, how did you know where we were?” I asked.

She just walked past me into the kitchen, lovingly fingering the dusty wood.

Years later we realized Mom had known the area well not only because she had lived in it for years, but also because that pharmacy, at the corner of our block, was where she went to get my dad's prescriptions filled when he was dying of cancer.

Knowing Mom, she hadn't shared this information with her pregnant daughter because she didn't want to upset me or put a damper on our impromptu celebration that day.

When our baby girl turned four, the sale of that sweet small row house was enough for a down payment on our single suburban home where we had three more children. That time, before moving, I gave Mom the address.

I don't remember Grandma moving in. She must've gotten as far as the living room and plopped down her recliner. She didn't have a bedroom, just a bureau (it appeared magically upstairs). Like the chair, we never touched this piece of furniture unless told to (she'd know if we did, it's part of the magic).

Puffy like her, the chair's crinkly material matched her skin in summertime. That's when she guarded us on our fenced-in cement slab out back. Grandma had a glow like the sheen of that fake leather. Its pores sweated out her essence even when she wasn't sitting.

The chair and its entourage of items piled behind and around it, hid one corner of our living room. Because of all the stuff, no way could the chair's head rest tip back to stretch out Grandma. It and Grandma were upright at all times.

No one got into our house without Grandma heralding them. She welcomed neighbors with witty greetings as they slipped through our vestibule: "Hey, Dick. How's

tricks?" or "Hey Joe, don'tcha know...?"

When not entertaining, and the house quieted, she let out roll call: “Where’s Donny? Where’s Allen?” If the one named didn’t answer, she'd send out the nearest scout.

My youngest brother may know what was at the bottom of the heap behind Grandma. She coaxed him to climb on the back of her recliner. Then she grabbed his chunky feet and hoisted him down, head first, behind her into the stuff. He came up with pinking shears on his first descent. "No, that's not it," she said, and let him down again.

Grandma took the fly swatter he came up with on his second upside down trip. "Try again." The rest of us had gathered around.

After the third dip, Benny came up with scraps of material and a centerpiece from the Boy Scout banquet, now a flattened blue and gold blob. My brother was a human crane, the kind you see in convenience stores that grabs prizes with a claw. Each time he emerged, his round face was redder, his blonde hair brighter. His smile strained, and the blue in his eyes drained.

A bit envious, I was mostly glad I wasn’t as compact as Benny. When he retrieved Grandma's plastic reach extender, we cheered and Grandma yelled, “Atta boy, Benny Boy!” On his feet, and no longer red, he staggered into the kitchen. The rest of us jumped up and down asking Grandma if she needed something else from behind her chair.

When Grandma needed something from her bureau, we scattered. Someone had painted this chest of drawers the exact steely silver that streaked from Grandma’s widow's point to the base of her head. Old Gray, with its crystal nobs, cramped the room my sister and I shared. One of us always wound up ascending the stairs to it on a treasure hunt that wasn't fun.

"Don't pull them drawers out too far. They're heavy and'll fall on ya," Grandma called over leadened feet trudging upwards.

The object was in drawer number One with its sharp smell of metal and 3-IN-1 OIL, or Two which puffed talc at me when I swished around the clothes in there, or Three with its grabbing odor of rubber and stockings that could be worn once more before the next washing.

Grandma never believed that the fourth and fifth drawer bottoms were gone. If she insisted something was in drawer number Four or Five, we’d start from Three and work our way up. The lower drawers must've been invisible. I saw the dusty floor beyond wooden strips that supported real drawers. The things we never found must have been (magically) in there.

At the end of the day, moonlight silhouetted this hulk housing Grandma’s personables. Its shadow crossed us as we slept on our cots. But even without this evening shade, the gray form held a presence in our bedroom.

We slept at ease, secure from above and below, resting in the fact that Grandma and her things were permanent.

As a young wife and new mother, I relished owning a home. Of course, it would take time for my husband to fix up the disabled house. So I cared for it and my daughter with patience. But, peering down through a basketball-size hole in our bathroom, through to the kitchen below and into our cellar, I wondered how long the repairs would take. When our baby began toddling, looking through floors lost its novelty.

After years of leading children tip toeing around and over projects in our second handyman's special, I stopped asking God to allow me to live in a home with no construction dust, and floors you didn't have to investigate before walking on. That's when the novelty returned, and with it grew humor.

***

My daughter drove me home after an autumn trip to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair. My son and his girlfriend were in the back seats. They all decided to come inside to say hello to Joe.

Joe was the fun parent, continuing to make all kinds of messes in the house that rivaled theirs when they were children. His projects didn't bother them as they grew up amongst the powdery layer of spackle dust and drywall residue. Sometimes it still unsettles their fastidious mother, though. To cope, I pretend I'm one of the Israelites on their forty year trek through dessert wilderness. After thirty-three years of marriage to Moses Joe, I only have seven more years to the promised dream home.

The four of us climbed the front steps to the house. We crowded in the doorway not going inside because of the familiar, heavy odor of fresh floor stain. A darker area of the floor where the welcome mat use to be was our second caution. We froze with the storm door half closed at our backs and the heavy wooden door swung open in front.

My daughter, the first in line, made a quick scan of the sun porch. Her attention stopped at a small area carpet on one side of the enclosed room. The rest of us followed her as she lunged into the dry section of porch. She steadied me as we all stood, huddled together, not knowing where else to step.

Joe yelled through the inside window, as he hugged a wall. "Would you mind going back outside and coming through the basement door?"

Our grown kids nodded with smiles of remembrance, along with my son's laughing girlfriend. As we vaulted back out the front door, I picked up on my children's nostalgia. They still didn't mind adjusting to inconveniences in their childhood home that changed with each new project. We trotted around to the side entrance of the house to greet Joe. He was taking a breather in the kitchen and asked about our day at the fair.

Access to the bathroom was cut off by drying stain, so our need for a restroom after the long ride encouraged us to perform another feat. We had become very good at balancing while taking care of functional necessities on the basement commode. It perched on a narrow, elevated slab like a true throne, three feet below the rafters. Joe installed this when he had worked on the floor in our upstairs, and only, bathroom.

At the fair, tightrope walkers and trapeze artists caused me to bite my nails as I had watched in horror, worried for their safety. Coming home to our private antics proved more entertaining because we weren't spectators.

As Joe prepares to ceramic tile the kitchen floor, I'm bracing myself to wash dishes in our bathtub. Rotation of rooms will include the kitchen moved into the dining room. The dining room will shift to the living room, among the few pieces of furniture we can own with the lengthy and constant changes to our living areas.

I'm trying to figure out how I'll cook in the dining room on a gas range that needs a hook up from the kitchen. Our last house had the gas stove in an attached shed that I accessed from outside. This is where I had cooked while the rest of the room aged into a finished space, just in time for us to pack up and move our growing family here.

That first house was where I experienced dish washing in a second floor bathtub. I was thinner then. Maybe Joe's present project plan will shed pounds from this middle-aged frame. With extra trips up and down stairs to wash dirty dishes and bring them back down clean, I should burn oodles of calories.

These discomforts have tripped fun creativity in my traditional thinking. The daily circus Joe involved our children and myself in united us as a family. We have become the Synchronized Flying Von Byrne Family that swings with difficulties and remain flexible when life throws us for a loop.

***

Our three-year-old granddaughter is quick to point to and comment on work "Pop" has done when she visits. She typically walks in, scouting rooms for changes. This is the child of my child whom I had feared falling through a multi-floor opening into the cellar of our first home. Hovering over my granddaughter as she travels from room to room, I try to prevent splinter, falls through flimsy window screens and fingers from exploring exposed outlets.

Then it hit me: not one of us were ever hurt living in our work-in-progress homes. I've heard that one eats a pound of dirt in a lifetime. With our family, it's probably powdered spackle mixed with saw dust. My daughter told me she doesn't remember much sickness in our large family while growing up. It's bizarre, but she's right. And we never had to made a trip to the emergency room.

Another generation traipses our dusty house of humor, learning to walk and where not to wander without falling through holes in our imperfect life.

My socks only touched the even number steps. After 14, I landed on the living room carpet in front of Grandma's ceramic Buddha. He was six inches tall. I measured him with the ruler my sister got from the third grade science fair. Buddha smiled across the room at Grandma snoring in her brown leather chair, with his legs crossed inside-out on top of our broken TV.

Liz squatted on the floor with our brother's rubber ball that had pimples on it. She set it in different places around the room, ob-serv-ing like a real scientist. Besides the ball, she had tried a lemon drop, and a bobbin from Grandma's sewing machine in her experiment that morning.

"Liz, doncha think Grandma looks like Buddha?" I asked.

"You're stupid," Liz said. "He's a man. Grandma's got hair and boobs."

"Yeah, but when her hair's wet, she looks bald. And her boobs look like extra long bellies rollin' over the sides of her big one." Grandma, wet in the sun, flashed into my head. "Maybe she's his wife."

"Gods don't have wives." Liz dribbled the ball.

"What about Zeus? He's married, and he's king of all the gods."

"People don't believe in that anymore," Liz said. "Those were just stories made up before people got smarter." She steadied the ball on the TV. It rolled to the left and circled a little. I didn't let on I agreed with Liz's de-duc-tion about pretend gods.

I asked, "Do you think people rub Buddha's belly for luck the way I like hugging Grandma's? I feel lucky magic when I'm near her belly."

"You make it sound like some sort of pot of gold. We're not Irish. And we don't worship Buddha either."

Liz chucked the ball into the kitchen. She made an ob-ser-va-tion of Buddha, then Grandma. "Grandma's tan does sort of make her look like the brown statue that got broke." Liz turned back to the TV. "This green one's prettier though." She rubbed its head.

"See?" I asked. "Green...Irish. Like the Barney Stone. Doncha rub that for good luck too?" Boy, was I proud of my de-duc-tion.

"No," Liz said as she climbed onto our floor console and stood up, with Buddha between her feet. "You kiss it while you hang over it." She bent until she was face to upside-down face with him. Her blonde hair dangled across the TV's screen like a grass skirt.

Grandma's sleep meditation was over in one extra loud snort. "Get down from there and leave that statue alone. I still can't get the head to stay on the one your brother broke." She coughed and shifted in her chair. The lady smell that stayed in the leather of the chair, even when she stood up, got stronger.

"I did it!" Liz said with her arms up. She jumped off the TV. "I kissed the Blarney Buddha's belly."

Grandma said something real low that I couldn't hear. She leaned to the right and then to the left. One of her huge crinkly hands disappeared each time into the big pockets sticking out from the sides of her recliner. With the TV not working, I heard sounds in the living room I didn't remember hearing before, like Grandma's chair burping when she moved in it, and the springy squeak when Liz popped onto the couch. I bounced on the carpet near the front door. That was where the floor creaked the loudest.

Liz investigated the rim and sides of an empty cup on the end table. She rolled it between her hands, but it dropped onto the coffee table upside down with a 'clump'. Grandma breathed a noisy breath and kept digging.

I sat with Liz on the couch next to Grandm'a recliner. Liz lifted her feet off the floor and criss-crossed her legs. She asked, "Grandma, can you sit in a lotus position?"

Wiggling on the couch, I forcing myself to keep quiet. Now that Liz had given up on the boring stuff, the fun started. In my head, I followed her scientific pro-ce-dure. Grandma and Buddha actually were two of the roundest things in the house.

"What?" Grandma asked.

"You know, on the floor, like Buddha on his little slab. I don't believe a real person with a belly can do it."

"How can I do that with only one leg?" Grandma pulled out a TV Guide, a red marker, a cone-shaped spool of thread, and a can of 3-IN-ONE oil from the chairs pockets.

I had forgotten too-about Grandma needing another leg to sit cross-legged.

Liz rolled her eyes from the leg that wasn't there to the ceiling, and kept them there for a few seconds. Then she asked, "Can you try it anyway, please? I want to also see which direction your body rolls."

"What for?" Grandma pull out a deck of cards and an empty tic tac dispenser, and piled them on a TV table.

"I'm trying to figure out how level the house is. Round stuff works the best," Liz replied.

I stopped fidgeting. Excitement bubbled inside me to see if Grandma would do it. Liz was her favorite because she was named after Grandma. Maybe Grandma would try since Liz asked her to do it.

"If I got on that floor, I'd never get up. Now run upstairs and see if my cigarettes are in the bathroom." Yep, Liz was her favorite. She always asks her to get the cigarettes.

"I'll get 'em." I didn't give Liz a chance to beat me to them.

I came back, plunking myself down every step, holding the gold pack of Marlboros. "Here you go," I said, handing it to Grandma and backing away.

Grandma flipped open the book of matches that was tucked under the cellophane around the cigarettes. "Damn it to hell."

My voice jumped: "What's the matter?"

"The match book's empty."

"Do you want me to get another one from the kitchen?" I froze on tiptoes, with a hand behind my back.

"No I found one," Grandma said, picking a bent pack of matches out from the space between the arm of her recliner and seat cushion. She shook the cigarettes until one popped out above the rest, then picked it out and shoved it between her lips.

I turned to leave.

"Wait a minute," Grandma said from the side of her mouth not clamping down on the cigarette. "Get back here. One's missing."

I swiveled around and handed over the cigarette. Grandma's acusing eye as she struck the match alive made me want to cry, but I couldn't in front of Liz, she'd make fun of me.

"I wasn't going to smoke it," I said. "Honest. I wanted it for Buddha."

, Grandma took the cigarette out of her mouth. "For what?"

Her question helped me control myself. "Don't people burn stuff in the little ash tray that sits in front of Buddha? I figured that, a cigarette could make some real good ashes for a god. More than them skimpy ones from those punk sticks."

"You leave my cigarettes alone, you hear? They're for me."

I slouched into a corner of the couch.

Liz asked, "Why were they in the bathroom, Grandma?"

"To help me relax in there."

"When you're...?" Liz began.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." Grandma dropped the lit match, and stomped her foot on it. "You made me burn myself. What's with all the questions anyhow? What do I look like? The Dalai Lama?"

Liz and I chanted, "No, Buddha."

"Do you hum and meditate in the bathroom?" I asked. "Don't you always say that happiness is a good bowel movement?"

"What?" Grandma's deep scratchy voice came from one side of her mouth as she finally lit her cigarette. "I just make that up for laughs."

"Buddha must laugh a lot," I said. "He's always smiling. He's got no teeth, like you, just a dark space."

Grandma squinted at the smiling god across the room, and sighed at the dark screen below him.

The doorbell rang.

"Elizabeth, go get the door." Grandma readjusted her dress, burped (not the chair this time), and sent more puffs of her goddessness into the air.

Mrs. Moores and Ms. Perry, the neighbors, came into our living room. If the TV was working, their noisy, silly words would've bumped higher than its volume.

They handed Grandma a box of Marlboros and a gold Buddha statue. Liz ran upstairs when they waved at us.

"Dawn, go put the tea water on for my worshipers." Grandma laughed.

I slid on purpose across the waxed kitchen floor, and caught myself at the stove. It seeped gas because the pilot light would never stay lit. I never got used to the nasty smell, even though I tried to because it was always there in the kitchen.

The mugs without handles worked good enough for the neighbors; Grandma's flamingo one for her; a flowered one for me. I counted out the tea bags. They made my nose happy.

My bag ripped so easy. The dry brown stuff was like the tobacco that I emptied from a cigarette box Grandma had asked me to throw away. How could two things that looked alike, smell so different?

I served the tea in the living room, and went back to the kitchen to drink mine. Liz came down to check on her penicillin experiment.

"Liz, did you ever learn about tea leaves in Mr. Boykins' science class?"

"What?" Liz asked, closing the bread box. The four day old bread smelled almost as bad as the fresh gas from the stove.

I lifted my mug with leaves floating in the steaming water and put it under Liz's nose. "We can read them like Aunt Bebe used to. Do you want me to make you some tea?"

"I'll fix it myself."

The dark nasty pieces stuck to my tongue. Liz hy-poth-e-sized that if we waited, all the leaves would sink to the bottom.

The adults still talked and laughed in the other room. Brown Buddha smiled from the counter above a ring of drying glue around his thick neck. My con-clu-sion: finding pictures in the soggy brown mess at the bottom of our mugs turned a boring Saturday into mystical, scientific fun.

Your responses to my post from last year on allergy issues has inspired me to share my doctor's recent findings. I'm trying to piece together exactly why I struggle with sinus and ear issues and how best to cope with them.

After a year of weekly allergy shots, my ENT required me to make an office visit for a procedure. He numbed my sinuses and inserted a super skinny tube with a light in search of polyps. While investigating, he told me I still had adenoids, or some remains of them. Apparently, most people's adenoids are gone by adolescence even if they aren't removed in childhood.

"Could this be why I get so many ear infections?" I asked.

"Possibly," he answered.

Finally, a clue as to why I've suffered beyond childhood with ear infections. Human ears, nose and throat surely are a strongly trinity.

My history includes nose bleeds as a child. Allergies became an issue during my teens. But the ear infections never stopped. My mother wanted the doctor to take out my tonsils. Those were the days when surgeons started to pull back from performing this minor operation. Mom never heard of adenoids.

Was Mom on the right trail? One of my doctors told her I had smaller than average ear tubes (not sure what it's called), keeping my ears from properly drying. This can cause bacteria to build up and breed infection. In spite of drying my ears after showering and avoiding swimming, infections persisted. In summer heat, moisture from perspiration may also be a culprit for those infections that frustrate me.

Now I instill a drop of alcohol in each ear after showering to dry up water and moisture. This may also keep infection down by killing bacteria. I believe using a neti pot to flush my sinuses, when allergy season is bad, helps reduce ear infections as well as sinus infections.

Last year, when I posted about beginning allergy shots, I had gum pain that turned out to be a badly infected tooth that needed root canal. That's how painful sinus can be. As I write this, my gum is throbbing. Another tooth infection? Or sinus pain?

I receive allergy shots every other week now. This is the second phase of a three year possible treatment for allergies that may also be a factor in my ear issues. Small improvement may be the result of the shots, along with my alcohol regiment and neti pot. I'm experiencing less body moisture due to natural aging. My guess is, this also helps with my nose running less.

I'm no doctor and am grateful to those who have aided me in pain relief. I'm just trying to figure out what the whole story is with my sinuses and ears. Allergens surely have been my silent enemy, but winter ear infections always boggled me.

Sinus issues and ear infections may not be deadly, but the pain and recovery can significantly dim quality of life. My wise ENT said that frequent and extended bouts of pain and discomfort can slip one into depression, which can be deadly. So many people suffer from these health issues. Thank you again for the information you included in your comments to my last post on this topic. I look forward to others.

Squirrel's NOT Gone

My husband doesn't need a wild animal skittering through our house causing disasters like in the movie, “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.” Joe alone wreaks havoc. But I'm the squirrely one, agreeing to live in another Handyman's Special; skunked again.

Our single dwelling stood out amongst neighbors' properties: no gutters, crumbling front steps and muddy driveway. But we were two poor city kids, grown, and had made it out of the neighborhood, and into the suburbs.

If you buy a not-quite-perfect house to live in with your children, you likely can't afford a new roof. Investigate for past water damage under the lid of your house. One absolute with a fix-me-upper is that even if the roof doesn't leak when you move in, that's where its incontinence will resume. So what you do is pray. Not that it won't leak, that's a miracle the most devout laugh at. But that when it does, your kids don't need braces on their teeth. Three of our four children needed to be wired, with accessories. Braces and a leaky roof just go together.

The gutters, driveway, steps and, yes, roof have been replaced, along with the heating system. Paneling ripped down and siding put up. Gallons of applied joint compound and paint have aged and need revitalizing. Wall-to-wall carpeting disappeared, revealing hard wood flooring ready to be refinished. And, besides a new roof, an old house requires an updated electrical system...

Our granddaughter ran through our empty living room on the gouged, paint-splotched wood floors. Although I had cleaned, it appeared she visited a third world home. Her petite stamping and voice resounded off exposed beams overhead where the ceiling used to hang.

On the second story, a gap in the bathroom floor limited privacy from below. Split boards exposed someone in the front bedroom when the bedroom light was on. But because of this, we did have decent visibility at night in the living room when the electric was off on the first floor.

Joe's eternal efforts to revamp our needy home single-handed, made some days inconvenient. I sat at my vanity one morning and the lights blinked off. Without blinking myself, I picked up a hand mirror and finished my toilet in light coming through the bedroom window. Mostly bind without my glasses anyway, I'm used to farding with help from the Force for cosmetic accuracy.

Once downstairs, breakfast had its quirks too. Lifting a loaf of bread from the open bread basket, I found pieces of the kitchen ceiling. I thought the white and off-white chunks of various size were large crumbs of stale bread that had fallen out of the bread bag. But the weight of them, as I picked them out of the basket, tipped me off to what they really were. Then I became a bird in Hansel and Gretel picking up ceiling rubble that marked the path of Joe's progress with the electrical work.

After the kitchen demolition, our cat puzzled me with an odd stare while standing at his food bowl. “You have food,” I said to him. His answered look of, “Hell-oo” caused me to inspect his meal more closely. I fingered the altered colored pieces of kibble. Ceiling debris lay amongst the remnants of food at the bottom of his bowl.

“I hung up a drop cloth,” Joe replied when I relayed the cat's complaint. “Some must've fallen out of it when I took it down.”

Then our granddaughter frolicked into the kitchen. She froze in the middle of the room, gazing upwards. Not yet two-years-old, her curly head moved as if in wonder at a rainbow. A colorless strip in the ceiling with wires licking through it ran from wall to wall. Starting in the middle of the room, her upturned face rotated in slow motion to the left, to the right, then back to the middle where a light and fan hung last time she visited. After repeating her inspection, she faced me and asked, “Fan?”

On her next visit, she toddled to the kitchen and tilted her face upwards, observing the replaced light and fan. She nodded and said, “Light” then went about her business of scampering through the echoing house.

My neighbor admired our seashore-blue dining room. She looked concerned when I told her about the walls now also disappearing throughout the house. My only solace to her was: “Joe hasn't started the dining room yet. So far he only disabled the electricity.”

Later, he worked in the basement feeding an exploring wire throughout the house. On my way into the dining room, the wire snake struck at me from between a remaining wall and its molding. It caught on my blouse and, as more slithered out from the wall, I fumble to stop it from entwining me. For two seconds I was the fourth stooge wrestling with a fish.

I chuckled, then retrieved my new book and blew dust from it. Residue from a fresh hole in the dining room ceiling, where a light had hung before lunchtime, blanketed the few objects around me. Nothing in the classic I held could be more novel than life with a wild, do-it-yourselfer.

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