I’m sorry to be morbid, but I’ve been thinking a lot about death again lately. This time, it’s the simple fact of mortality that’s got me flustered. It’s as if it never dawned on me that I won’t live forever, and neither will my family and friends. I keep overhearing people at stores and in restaurants talking about hospitals and radiation and surgery, and the loved ones of neighbors and friends are dropping like flies. How unfair! There’s so much to do! To distract myself, I jumped into a frenetic burst of hot-weather productivity.
So far this summer, I’ve painted or helped paint about 32 walls, five doors, many yards of woodwork, a staircase, and two ceilings—one a mural of a summer sky with a veiling of translucent white clouds floating lazily along. This latter was a labor of love for my youngest daughter that took about six hours (thank God her room is the size of a closet), and my neck has almost straightened itself out now, six weeks later.
This morning, I sit at rest in the study, birds chirping away furiously outside the window, clear sun and sky dappling brightly through a thick canopy of oak. I’m taking a moment to revel in the soothing cheer of the fresh rose chintz walls—which still need another edging from this view—and I’m taking stock of all this new color and its deeper meaning. Because there was more to the obsessive painting than just tidying up the place. I had a mission, based on some wise words from my hero, Anne Lamott, who says that “perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
I wasn’t looking at my feet when I painted the living room brick red. I was terrified to do it, having been a white and off-white kind of gal all these years. Yeah, white is safe and tasteful and all, but it’s also as enticing as pabulum. Ever since painting one small wall in the foyer a dusky red last summer, I’ve been desperate to go for more. So, while Jon was busy on a ladder scraping the walls upstairs, I whipped out the color swatch I’d nabbed at Home Depot, waved it in his general direction, and called as I backed casually into the hall, “The foyer walls are drying and I’m going out for more sponges . . . and I’m going to grab some paint for the living room, as long as you don’t object to this color, bye!” I ran down the stairs and out the door before he could talk me out of it.
The results? Shocking and then pleasing, especially after we ran out in a panic and bought four new lamps to brighten it up. According to belatedly consulted color experts (a cheesy page on the web), red paint suggests vitality and aggressiveness. It conveys amorous vibes, and deep subtle shades are perfect for living rooms, creating an intimate, cozy feel. What do you know! At worst, say the experts, red is too dramatic.
With this small success buoying our confidence, Jon and I really got bold, and we blissfully and fearlessly imagined a burnt orange for the dining room. We spent an hour poring over the samples and finally settled on three cans of Flaming Glow, I think it was called. But we probably should have brought that little cardboard patch of Flaming Glow home before we paid for the paint, because when we taped it up to the dining room wall and stood back, it was unequivocal: If we painted our walls that color, the onset of violent insanity would be swift and merciless. I should have checked into the expert view of orange, a dominant color that combines the energy of red with the intellectual associations of yellow and is, at its worst, non-relaxing.
So we veered for a soft, creamy yellow, and continued sanity (more or less). That’s life for you. You win some and you lose some, you get stuck with a few cans of crazy orange paint, and then you die. But at least nobody can say your walls were boring.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply