When You Paint a House: A Soliloquy

At the productive ages of 8, 11, and 43 my mother, sister, and I picked up brushes and rollers. No, not the kind you use on your hair.

Our house is the biggest painting I’ve ever done.

Although our desks were not void of paper, these walls often worked as makeshift canvases. My mother, being an evangelist for creativity, never objected to our Homerun Pastel adventures. In fact, she encouraged it.

This time, the walls were to be the colour of the longest crayon in the 12 pack- white.

Armed and ready, we set to work. With a team of two kids and an adult, and a complete lack of painters tape, we managed to cover not just the walls, but the skirting along its edges and a few obstructing door frames; splaying dots that still exist to this very day.

A masterpiece.

Chip away at these white layers, and you might just find mammoth-sized butterflies; their crooked wings taking them across green seas in the light of a blue sun, over to the stick people with fingers of 6 and 8, each one as tall as a tree.

The kind of life that can only ever live in one dimension. One that has been created by a mind that cannot yet fully comprehend the nature of things; or perhaps one that knows and couldn’t care less.

But now it’s time to do away with the color. It’s time to grow up and confine our art to frames. They were less permanent and gave you room to change your mind. After all, it is easier to swap out a frame than a coat.

Peeling off this old coat, the allergy-inducing part movies don’t tell you about, gives way to thoughts about the origins of every etch on it.

In the case of our house, dogs and humidity made up for what childhood restlessness fell short on. Take the random urge to rearrange rooms into consideration and the unfortunate trails of furniture we weren’t too careful with would contribute too.

But now it’s time to cover up our traces. It’s time to fill in the cracks and sandpaper down the bumps till it feels brand new again.

The walls did not need to be white, we just wanted them to be. This change was solely vanity.

Chip at the paint a little more, and you’ll find a beige. That’s how it exists in my first few memories. Persevere, and a red will reveal itself from beneath. That, I do not remember. It’s almost as if you have gone too far and made the walls bleed. Never paint your walls red.

On such an occasion, one tends to question how many layers it would take to make a room noticeably smaller. Coats upon coats till the walls grow an inch, making everything more compact.

It seems that as we grow, the house shrinks; once high door frames can be grazed by finger tips, corridors made for trios downsize to pairs, and the 4 gallops from the bedroom to the hall have merely become a few steps.

Sure, we still climb to see the tops of cupboards, but we’ve switched out tables for chairs- stools even, and meet eye to eye with the shelves we once looked up to.

The furniture remains intact, but we cannot help but notice how the paint peels.

And so we wait till time, dogs, and vanity call for another coat.