Yesterday Once More

It has been very hot the last couple of days and wouldn't you know it, this is when I got around to tackling the big summer project: painting The Child's room.

I hate painting. Love the results, hate the taping and cutting-in and second coats. I really hate doing it in a small room when the temperature is pushing 90°. Also, not so fond of the aching back and continuing to find bits and blotches of paint on myself, no matter how diligently I think I'm scrubbing.

But I told The Child there's be one more re-do of her room, something a little more sophisticated (and something that will work for me when I take over the space after she goes off to college). So we moved everything she owns out onto the deck (the plus of having a hot spell) and got to work. Yes, yes, I'll show you pictures, but not until it's done.

We work fairly collaboratively, trading brushes and rollers and keeping The Dog from dipping his muzzle into the paint. It's hot and we're sweaty and continually encouraging ourselves with talk of how great it will be when we're done. And there's the music. She plugs in her iPod, puts it on shuffle and so we have a soundtrack. Sure, there's all the stuff that makes Uncle JP's brain bleed but there's also a hearty mix of 80s classics, Abba and, of course, the soundtrack to "Moulin Rouge". It's delightful.

So there I am, paint on my nose and some Miley Cyrus thing playing, the smell of drying paint in the hot air and all a sudden I am The Child's age. I'm perched on my bed, using historically accurate colored pencils to fill in my "Henry the Eighth and His Six Wives" paper dolls while Dame Judi is transforming my room. Deep plum paint goes onto the walls...the first time I ever remember picking the wall color for myself. But the real challenge of the project is that Dame Judi is papering the ceiling. She's using gift wrap we found at Pier One Imports. It is wildly floral; not chintz but more of a Peter Max sort of op-arty thing. The flowers are, I think, purple, pink and green. I seem to recall accents of gold. I'm sure it was garish and dreadful but I was in love with it. And as if papering a ceiling with gift wrap wasn't project enough, she was also creating a valance all along the top of the wall, cutting thick strips of the paper and trimming around the flowers so the valance had a scalloped effect.

It was one of the hottest weeks of the summer and there we were, in a stuffy upper bedroom. I don't remember that I was actually helping (although I may have done some of the cutting of the floral border). Dame Judi says my job was just to keep her company. I don't know if I ever told her but the one thing I do remember about that week was a feeling of profound gratitude. My room was going to be soooooooo beautiful and Dame Judi was giving over a whole lot of time to the project.

It's all of a piece: the gratitude, the heat, the smell of paint...the pear tree out my window, the paper dolls and the music. We had our music, too; listening over and over again to the Carpenters "Now and Then" album. Oh, say what you will, but Carpenters were, for me, actually the portal to a lot of other music, the sort that wasn't often allowed in our house and which was otherwise foreign to me. The genius of the "Now and Then" album is that the song "Yesterday Once More" (shoo-be-do-lang-lang) was the entrée to a medley of oldies hits. It was very "concept", snippets of a "DJ" weaving between the clips of "Da Do Run Run" and "One Fine Day" and the like. I loved it and while I'm sure we were listening to other records as well, the B side of "Now and Then" is the soundtrack for that DIY summer




Redd Kross "Yesterday Once More"