Ed’s not a new age kind of guy, so I know there’s a grin in that statement.
I was loud because the wind was knocking down the ladder on top of me. I scraped all morning long. My hands are blistered. With bloody knuckles. I’m doing it so you can paint before the cold spell sets in.
The instructions on the can warn not to paint below 35 degrees and Ed is interpreting that generously: last week’s high of 37, for example, was not good enough. Too cold.
And he is right – I am in a rush. We’re so close now to having the most visible portions of the farmhouse painted. I'll settle for that much. So that when you drive up it mostly seems yellow rather than oddly multi-toned.
The journey, gorgeous, he grins. It’s the journey.
The nickname “gorgeous” comes up a lot ever since I stopped cutting and coloring my hair. Jason, the hair color genius would be appalled.
We paint and scrape in silence.
Ed positions the ladder and I climb higher. Don’t fall. Please. You’re so clumsy!
He doesn’t mean it. And yet he means it. But even as he means it, he’s not bothered by it.
In the evening we stop and drive down to the café. Paul, the proprietor, is getting ready to close. Between the routines of shutting down the place he talks about what it’s like to have grown up with a very remarkable but also remarkably unusual dad. I think about unusual parents, unusual upbringings. I think about how I’ll be seeing my own father within a month.
The café's closed now. Ed and I make our way to Harbor Freight – that "guy" store (his description). Lots of metal. He picks up another motion detector so that we can better monitor the comings and goings of Isis the cat. Do we really need it? I ask. Yes! I think Ed would have been an interesting dad.
We drive home with just the faint light of the inadequate beams of Ed's ancinet Geo. There isn't a bright moon, but there are plenty of stars outside. It'll be a cold night again tonight.
