I am writing this from my newly painted home office/formerly Daughter’s bedroom with the peach walls that I planned on being beige. I wrote about this in Baker’s Dozen Love Story, but in case you didn’t read that particular entry, the short version is that despite being eager to repaint Daughter’s peach-colored walls, the end result was that I chose something eerily similar. Since publishing that entry, I’ve formulated a theory about how this subconscious painting blunder occurred, but first I have to tell you about the Blind Lady.
I have found that it makes sense for me to enter trades people into my cell phone by their trade rather than their name since I’m more likely to be looking for “Electrician” rather than Stan or Anthony or whoever. This is how I come to have a cell entry for “Blind Lady,” meaning the woman who furnishes our window treatments. This week I had a home appointment with her to choose some stellar, kickass blinds for the three windows in my office, the goal being to create a diversion from the walls that seem to grow in peachiness each time I enter the room.
On her way to my house, the Blind Lady was in a six-car accident, her own vehicle being number five. Here we will totally avoid the easy joke about the Blind Lady driving on the parkway and forge ahead. She called me from the side of the road, ambulance sirens blaring in the background, to say she’d be about two hours late. Although others in the accident had been injured, the Blind Lady was navigating a Yukon, a vehicle one notch below a Hummer in mass. She came away unscathed, although the Yukon sustained thousands in damages. I told her to just go home, but she said what the hell, the car was drivable so why not git ‘er done? That’s one tough businesswoman.
With the Blind Lady’s expert advice, I chose luscious espresso-colored cellular shades that will soothe the sienna accent wall, and provide striking contrast to the peach ones. It will be lovely. As she wrote up the sale, I told how I came to repaint Daughter’s walls in a color oddly reminiscent of the original. Husband says there is a reason for every decision, although it may not be the one we think. He says sometimes it’s an inside job, social worker jargon for the stuff that goes on in our heads. Since I no longer have regular sessions with the Wise Man, I have muddled my way through self-analysis of this issue and come out the other side.
I took over Daughter’s room, her special place painted in the color she chose. Within these four walls she laughed, sobbed, studied, yakked on the phone, blasted her music, told secrets, made plans and defied me when she absolutely had to. It was here she became the unstoppable individual she is today, still and always my best friend and favorite woman on the planet. She has been out of my house and on her own for seven years, certainly long enough for me to pick the perfect color to make her walls my own. And in the end, I didn’t. Because keeping them peach somehow keeps a piece of her here. It is a room I would rather share than own.
When I was done with my story, the Blind Lady asked where Daughter is now. I told her she lives in the city and teaches kindergarten. My guest opened her eyes wide and said her own daughter just started kindergarten. We sat on the floor together silently, surrounded by sample books, thinking of our girls. The Blind Lady looked around the room at my beautiful peach walls and smiled.
Here are Daughter’s Droid Fotos of NYC’s Fashion Night Out
chanel
prada
i see you
prada boots
agent provocateur