Slapping Aesop Upside the Head

Remember when I was psyched about my deck? If you don’t you can refresh your memory by reading Redemption. I’m almost embarrassed by the way I gushed with so much enthusiasm because now, if I had my 'druthers, I would put a torch to the whole entire deck and be done with it. What has happened? (Well, you can never underestimate the power of the hormonal cycle in a woman and anybody would be a fool and/or suicidal to make that mistake but that's another blog for another day.) I’ll tell you what has really happened, two hundred more square feet of decking renovation has happened( it's actually more square footage but measuring is overwhelming). Not to mention the railing that surrounds the entire looming entity. There is nothing more tedious than trying to put rosewood oil on hundreds of one by one inch railing slats. Where is Tom Sawyer to come recruit me some fence painters when I need him? I have been doing this job for four weeks now and every muscle is tired and sore. I feel like the Karate Kid under the cruel and exacting dictatorship of Mr Miyagi. And if I don’t get to Crane Kick somebody in the face as my reward, I’m going to be really mad.

In sum, I just want to quit. I fleetingly mentioned my quitting nature in one of my first blogs: Calling All Artists. In this glossing review, I might have failed to convey my lifelong commitment to this quitting. I am so fond of my plan of inaction that I even tried to quit giving birth to my firstborn child twenty hours into labor. Exhausted and unable to comprehend the pain and frustration of a seemingly ridiculous process, I turned to my husband and told him, “That’s it, I can’t do this. Just take me home. I’m done.” If it weren’t for my husband’s amazing and surprising skills as a doula, my son could easily have ended up as some sort of vestigial appendage, instead of the six foot something, seventeen year old, independent being he is today. That, and the fact you can’t actually quit labor...believe me, I tried.

I have no doula to talk me through finishing this dumb deck renovation. It has become tedious and tiresome and I am sick of it. When I last mentioned my tendency to quit, I also mentioned that I am trying this new thing called, “Not quitting.” Toward that end I am being my own doula. I have been talking to myself (silently) in soothing and encouraging tones, telling me,”You can do this.” As I wax on-wax off in an endless round of monotony, I find myself saying, “Slow and steady wins the race Meghan, slow and steady wins the race.” Soon I realize how stupid this saying is. Slow and steady wins what race? I doubt there was ever a real race that slow and steady actually won.

Suddenly I want to slap Aesop upside the head. I begin a full-scale argument with this belaureled toga-wearing moron who made up the story of The Tortoise and the Hare in the first place. I start to imagine that Aesop must have been an uncoordinated doofus who had a very athletic sibling who always won every physical contest they ever had. Aesop, while physically challenged, was persuasive and crafty with the words. So he used his talents to create a scenario by which he, the tortoise, could beat his brother, the hare. And for century after century, we, like gullible idiots have taken to heart a lesson so contrived it hinged on a narcoleptic rabbit.

I am now furious that I have spent so many years, probably thirty-five, believing in the sage wisdom of the moral of this ridiculous story. Slow and steady does NOT win any races. Fast and steady probably could win you some races. Let's take Lolo Jones for example, whom I admire for her awesomeness and her ability to run races without slipping into slumber. Is Aesop seriously going to try and tell her, that if she had just gone slowly in her 100m hurdle race at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she would have won? She might not have tripped over that second to last hurdle but she sure as shooting would not have won that race. So should the moral of the story be, “Slow and steady keeps you from tripping”? or should we really shoot for the stars with “Slow and steady finishes the race”? That’s a little more plausible.

The new moral doesn’t take into account the possibility of the inveterate quitter. Who’s to say that going slowly would have prevented that silly hare from taking his ill-fated nap? Maybe he would have gone to sleep anyway but because he decided to go slowly, he would have covered less territory before slipping off to dreamland. Where does that leave me, who most closely resembles the idiot bunny in this scenario. If I started my chore slowly, then I probably would have just gotten less accomplished before deciding to quit. That would be worse than my method of starting out with high enthusiasm and then losing the enthusiasm over time until I come to complete standstill.

Maybe the moral of the story for me should be this: “Don’t take a nap before you finish the race you naughty bunny.” I take this new line of encouragement and use it as my own personal doula through the renovation process. “Don’t take a nap before you finish the race you naughty bunny." Aka: "Don’t quit, Don’t quit, Don’t quit.” Surprisingly my harangue against Aesop has carried me through the homestretch of the project. As I look around, I realize all I have left is the outer skirting of the deck to finish up. That will involve some ladder work. Ladders on the hillside might keep me entertained through the end. If not, maybe I will find another ancient sage, perhaps Plato or Socrates, to pick a fight with. If all else fails, I will be my own advocate: “Don’t take a nap before you finish the race you naughty bunny.” Who knows? It might work. It got me through today.

Redemption

I’m so psyched about my deck. I have finished refurbishing the front portion and, before I move on to the other 200+ square feet of stairs and back deck, I thought I would take a moment to reflect and celebrate before the thrill wears off. I made a bet with my son about how long the new deck could keep me happy, he estimated until Friday (last Friday) and I am pleased to announce that when I walked across it this Monday morning I still got a little shiver of satisfaction and accomplishment.

What is it about refurbishing my deck that makes me so happy? I will let you in on a little secret. I am a sucker for a redemption story: from Les Miserables to A Tale of Two Cities to Crime and Punishment ( the list goes endlessly), I love when somebody spins a yarn about a character who has been deemed useless, rotten or broken and somehow that bread-stealing, vain and selfish, murderer finds a way to be made useful, changed, whole again.

My love of this theme has translated into the everyday corners of my life. I compost, not because I am a tree-hugging environmental-case. Although I do have hippie hair, drive a Eurovan and make my own jewelry, I really compost because I love the idea of taking what is widely viewed as garbage: eggshells, coffee grinds, orange rinds, horse-manure, rescuing these items from their uselessness and helping them make a new life. As I turn the compost heap I witness this garbage mature and transform into something life-giving, full of purpose and rich in nutrients...in my own backyard. Fabulous. In my little world this chore had been upgraded from composting to The Redemption Of The Kitchen Scraps. Love.

I also like to rescue treasure on garbage day or from the dark dusty corners of the Salvation Army Store to repurpose someone’s discards into something new and fabulous. For example, I am already plotting a mosaic for another face of the huge cement cubes that are the footings that hold up my deck. Over the years I collected enough broken shards of pottery, thank you children and minor earthquakes, to cover three of the twelve footings beneath my newly refurbished deck. I learned early, as a young mother of a six, four, two and zero year old that crying over broken pottery is useless. I learned to ask myself the question, “What can I do with this ruined item instead of scolding my children for their cruelly destructive tendencies?” (in the earlier years instead of was almost always after) Once I changed my perspective, my creative outlets have benefitted enormously from my kids’ flailing arms and legs and the occasional projectile let loose in the ongoing casual warfare of siblings. Sigh, the kids have really slowed their production as they’ve grown and with the dearth of earthquakes I’ve had to branch out to the thrift stores. I grumble not, smashing second hand pottery is extremely satisfying and the redemptive process continues.

How does the thrill of refurbishing the deck figure into this story? I would think it obvious but if not, let me spell it out. I wish I had a “before” picture of the deck to help you understand. My father told me this morning that Napoleon Bonaparte was the initiator of the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Sorry, Mon Petit Général, I have no picture so my words will have to suffice. Because it is less than a thousand words you won’t be getting your money’s worth though. It looked like crap. After power washing it, sanding it down, power washing it again, sanding it down some more....it looked less crappy. Then I ripped out some rotting pieces, cut them down to size and replaced them with good redwood. I stained the whole with a mahogany stain to hide some of the unevenness and then applied a rosewood oil to it (this stuff is magic and I highly recommend it) The deck looks rich and, with its chocolate sheen, kind of delicious. I find it deeply satisfying, not only on a physical level but in that place where redemption took up its dwelling in me, that I was able to participate to redeem that ugly old deck and turn it into something beautiful.

I suppose it could be argued that I lend these simple tasks a certain grandeur to make the dreadful monotony of the mundane seem more exciting. I am willing to accept that if it’s true. Somehow that does not steal any of the thunder of walking across my lovely new deck, laying black compost on my new bed of ornamental grasses, admiring the beautiful deck footing that was once an ugly block of concrete. Furthermore the thrill is not reduced but multiplied by the fact that many of the ingredients that mixed together to create this excitement were destined to doom if they had not been rescued and used for a new purpose. The kitchen scraps, the broken pottery, the rotting wood reflect the parts of me that seemed ruined, ugly and destined for failure and were changed into something useful, healthy, life-giving and destined for good-purpose. Bowled over by the redemptive process, I am grateful to participate in it, on even the smallest level.

So maybe I’m crazy. I’ll accept that too. My particular brand of crazy allows me to walk with sheer joy across my front porch to the door of my house. I’ll take that crazy every day of the week, especially Monday.