Two excerpts from The Boomerang House
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I’m not sure there’s anything quite like rehabbing an entire house to initiate or exacerbate a flaming case of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I found myself doing the strangest of solo ballets, choreographed by no one, wherein I would decide my next project should be painting the foyer walls, and I would go to the hall closet to retrieve my painting supplies which I had a hard time finding and would decide that I absolutely couldn’t go another day without organizing all the tools I had hurled into the hall closet to get them out of sight, and would discover that I only possessed flat head screwdrivers, no Phillips, and would grab my phone to order a Phillips head screwdriver online and would notice the message from the phone company that my autopay wasn’t properly set up, and would interrupt my already interrupted self to call the phone company to straighten out my billing, and while on hold I would notice the grime on the stairs where I was sitting with the phone and go back to the hall closet to look for the electric sander, and, and, and, and, and. ADD has also been cited as the number one contributing factor to writers writing run-on sentences.
Some days were better than others and I could actually hone in on one specific task and get it accomplished; well, more or less. But when I would be awakened in the middle of the night by some strange noise downstairs my mind would quickly go by default to all the things that remained undone. I don’t know how people who don’t meditate and drink rosewater manage to get through life. I was also keeping the Band-Aid manufacturers in business. I hadn’t worn this many Band-Aids since I was a third grader playing skip tag on the asphalt playground at grade school. Although I felt great and had no physical problems that needed medication or treatment, I did have what I called “old lady skin,” which got thinner and crepier as the years ticked by. I was forever amused and reminded of the book Nora Ephron wrote about aging. She described being in a helicopter one day and being so startled by seeing the wind blow the skin hanging down from her upper arms that she almost jumped out. I wasn’t riding in a helicopter but I was doing hard manual labor every day and I was uninterruptedly bleeding and bruised. Yet one more advantage to being in a cooler climate, I could at least wear long-sleeved shirts and blue jeans and not expose the rest of the world to a body that appeared either fresh from a car wreck or in the late stages of a battle with alcoholism.
Thankfully, my embarrassment of the blood and bruises, and my frustration with the ADD would abate if not vanish every time I stopped to let a wild turkey cross my driveway at their awkward, shuffling pace, or stop the car entirely to visit with a mother deer and her fawn so young it still had its spots. I’m not sure if this qualifies as ADD while writing, but as soon as I finished that sentence I had to research why deer lose their spots. Turns out to be another one of nature’s basic miracles. The chief defense from predators for deer is to run like the dickens, which is a euphemism people used in Shakespeare’s time because they didn’t want to say devil. But newborns don’t have the leg muscle strength or the leg length to do that, so nature gives them camouflage spots which makes them harder to discern by predators. Around three to four months of age, most fawns lose their spots and become the solid brownish color we are used to seeing in adult deer. By then, hopefully, they’ve also muscled up enough to run like the dickens from predators.
After about two months of working on the house, I began to think of it as almost a living entity, like a person who had been kidnapped and tortured, but could be brought back to a healthy, happy life with a lot of time, love and nurturing. Or as a person who had been in a devastating car accident and had to have months of physical therapy to learn how to walk again. Yes, that’s exactly what I was feeling emotionally, restoring this house to its former self. And just like the car accident victim taking his first step, there were days I felt great progress. But also like the kidnapping victim who relapses into a bout of PTSD, there were days when the restoration seemed insurmountable. Therapists use patience to help people doing the best they can to go through a rough time, and I had to have patience with my house. When I got the 4th screwed up delivery in a row, or when I took inventory of what work remained to be done and felt absolutely overwhelmed, I could plop down in my chair and stare out at a forest and feel gratitude well up in me like an overflowing fountain, gratitude that I was no longer gazing out at a crowded, noisy cityscape.
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Some years ago, during my first residence in the Boomerang House, I had made the pilgrimage to Glens Falls and done a huge grocery shopping, just prior to a big snow storm predicted to come in that night. I thought I was being so prudent, stocking up on provisions, and sure enough, it snowed like crazy, piling up in heavy mounds during the night. Or course the power went out, but that was no big deal. I had candles, flashlights, and lanterns at the ready, and being the intelligent homo sapien that I was, I quickly removed all the food I had just bought from the now nonfunctioning refrigerator, packed it all into ice chests and then stuck the ice chests out in the snow banks near the house. Problem solved.
Except for one minor detail. A black bear’s sense of smell is considered to be the best of any land mammal, up to seven times stronger even than a bloodhound’s. (Pause for a moment and visualize black bears being trained to sniff out drugs in airports and school lockers.) According to information from the Fish & Wildlife Commission they can pick up a scent from over a mile away, so they could certainly smell a pound of ground beef from a hundred yards.
I was all set to enjoy the snow storm. I had a new, unworked 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, several good books, lots of dry kindling and firewood, and even a battery powered radio if I wanted to touch base with the rest of the world. My plan was to cook a big pot of potato soup on top of the wood stove, relax, and have a grand snowcation. I was teaching at the time, but school was canceled. I had nowhere I had to be, nothing I would miss out on. I could start shoveling when the snow stopped falling.
But as I sat with a hot cup of tea, gazing out my glass windows, taking in the peaceful, clean visage of a freshly whitened landscape, my idyllic repose was shot all to smithereens. I saw a big, black bear, walking upright, straight across my backyard. He was carrying one ice chest in each arm. No kidding. I am not making this up. He walked only about a hundred yards or so and sat down and proceeded to gorge himself on yogurt, vanilla ice cream, and cottage cheese. There must have been a huge pile of bear poop fertilizing the nearby woods after all that dairy. He (she?) also consumed a pound of ground beef, a package of honey smoked turkey lunch meat, and numerous other goodies I had bought to last the whole next month. The only thing he left me was a jar of olives he couldn’t manage to open.
I retrieved my ice chests when the bear was finished. I didn’t see him belch and wipe his mouth with the back of his paw, but I feel he must have before he wandered off to take a sweet dream filled nap. One of the chests had big holes from his claws, but it still opened and closed properly and I continued to use it for years. People would laugh and point at my ice chest and say, “Looks like a bear got a hold of it.” And I would reply, “Yep.”
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