Summer days. Blissfully free of worry, no thought more pressing than "what's for dinner?" These are my normal childhood memories. I couldn't really tell you which summer any particular memory is from... the summers run together on the movie screen in my mind, for the most part. But one summer stands out. It was from early in my childhood... I was maybe 5 years old? I think it was after I'd been to kindergarten, so that would make me 5.
Mom stayed home with us kids, although other moms in the neighborhood worked. So during the summer days, our house was the gathering place for the neighbor kids. That summer, Mom put us to work.
We lived in an older house, and Mom decreed it was time to change the wallpaper. She always preferred wallpaper to paint. The house had been built in the 1930s or thereabouts, and had plaster walls. I remember stripping wallpaper off those walls. All of us helped, including some of the neighbor kids. I've got vague memories of brushes with water, and huge putty knives/scrapers, and lots of elbow grease as we ripped the wallpaper all the way down to the plaster. When the upstairs hallway was fully stripped, Mom brought out a pencil, and we all signed our names on the wall, before she papered over it. I was very impressed with being allowed to write on the wall - I usually got in trouble for things like that.
Mom wrote the current date, and a statement about how all of had worked so hard for however many days to do this job, and we each signed our names. Then we were finally released to go find other, more enjoyable ways to work up a sweat, while she papered over her magnum opus.
I'd not thought of that summer in decades, until today.
Today, I found myself stripping wallpaper. In the sun. In the summer. The wall surface has changed - my walls are drywall, not plaster, and I'm only stripping down to the previous layer of wallpaper, but the process seems to be fundamentally the same. Except I won't be writing on my walls when they're stripped, and I'm stripping them to paint them, not to re-paper them.
But I saw faces today I've not seen in years... the neighbor kids - Jenny, Monica, Tresje... my sisters, younger than they've been in decades. That was good. It was nice to see them all again.
I've still not figured out why I'm working so assiduously on a rental unit, but it's not costing me very much (some primer, some paint, and some time/energy), so I'm not complaining. And if it turns out that my next house has hideous wallpaper that needs to be removed, I'll know I'm up to the task, and that I'll have good company while I do it.
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