January 26th, 2011
Don’t let Mamma pick out paint until after the cataract surgery!
Years ago, during the period in my life that became known as “my tragic exile” I briefly returned to my hometown to live.
My Mother’s response to any crisis in my life was always to tell me “Just come home and live in one of my rental houses.”
One day my response changed from “I would rather slit my wrists…” to “OK.” She promptly called my sister and said “Michelle is going to kill herself.” (I have mentioned her tendency to be a Drama Queen.) I lived in first one and then the other of her houses, clearing, cleaning, planting gardens and painting as I went.
One day I was pondering the near-neon, robin’s egg blue that my grandmother had painted the bedrooms in her house. I called Mother and asked “Did Nanny have cataracts when she chose the paint color.”
She had indeed. I, of course, had no such excuse as I painted rooms with rich vibrant colors.
Several years later, Mother’s house was in dire need of a new coat of paint. She went to the hardware store, chose the color and paid someone to paint the house. She thought she was painting it the same muted, Williamsburg blue.
However, her own cataracts had dimmed her color perception. What looked like a pale, dusty blue, was indeed Bahama Beach Shack blue.
Yeah, the neighbors were horrified. A Victorian bungalow on an otherwise conservative street, it looked like a neon barn. To further insult the house, she replaced the roof with an enameled tin roof—a clashing shade of slate blue. After she had her cataract surgery, she was horrified herself, but that much paint is really expensive for a retired person.
Now, my sister is tasked with clearing out the house, one blue room after another (with the exception of the Pepto-Bismol Pink bedroom) in order to sell it. Know anyone who wants a Bahama beach house in the middle of Alabama?
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