Water Pipes and Memories

So much to talk about, where to begin? I feel like my brain is so full of thoughts and now I've waited over a week to write and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it all out, but here goes.

Kitchen Project: Progress and (almost) Disaster
As you may know, I embarked on the seemingly crazy mission to repaint my kitchen cabinets back in December. I'm in the home stretch now, having sanded, painted and re-attached endless cabinet doors (while cursing under my breath). I only have one more section to go, although it's the largest section and will take more work than any of the others. But the point is, the light is at the end of the tunnel.

Yesterday I had a few hours to kill so I dove into the project, removing cabinets doors and hardware to prepare for the final stage. My plan after painting the cabinets is to sand all the wallpaper glue off the walls (fifty years worth of wall paper glue due to the fact that the kitchen was re-papered FIVE times since the early 60's) and then paint the walls an as-yet-undetermined color. I decided it was time to remove the clunky spice racks and paper towel holder over the sink so I grabbed my screwdriver and got to work.

These particular spice racks had been put up six years earlier by my husband. We bought them at IKEA and at the time I thought they looked great, but as the years wore on I became increasingly annoyed by the racks due to the fact that I basically had to take all the spices out of it in order to find the one elusive spice I'd be looking for. Because of this I attacked the spice racks with great gusto, excited by the prospect of getting rid of them once and for all.

I started unscrewing the second screw when all of a sudden brown rusty water started gushing through the hole. I frantically trying screw it back in, foolishly thinking this would stop the leak but of course that did no good. I suddenly pictured the pipe behind the wall bursting under the pressure and I heard my dad's voice inside my head saying "Turn off the main water valve!" For the third time in as many years I scooted into the crawl space to turn off the water to the house. Crisis averted.

John found it humorous that he'd drilled that screw into the wall six years ago right smack into the water pipe and that it wasn't until I'd decided I was through with the spice racks that his mistake was discovered. The bill from the plumber wasn't all that funny, but I guess it could have been worse. After it was all said and done, I wrote this message to my dad on his pink doodle pad . . .

We now have a nice new pipe and a big hole above the sink. We've decided that John's new project can be learning how to put in drywall. Since this started off as a DIY project I told him to go for it. How hard can it be? I really, really want to get this kitchen done!!

Hole in the wall and the offending pipe

The Art of Saving Stuff
This topic could probably be a whole blog post in itself - but I'll just make mention of it now. Last weekend I went through some old files of my dad's at my parents' house and discovered some great stuff: old letters, photos, various documents and random things that he'd saved. I found a sweet set of letters written by my 8 year old sister to each of my parents during her first time away at summer camp. My mom and I laughed ourselves to tears reading letters my dad had written to us in his familiar scrawl, full of his typical stream of consciousness way of writing and sometimes politically incorrect observations of his surroundings. I uncovered old photographs of his childhood in Lithuania and Germany during WWII and it made me realize how little I actually know about those years. I remember certain stories he'd told but am now regretting that I hadn't made a bigger effort in recent years to get those stories re-told and documented somehow.  Even though our time together became limited due to his illness, there must have been some part of me that thought we had more time than we actually did. I wish I could ask him questions, like what was like to come to America at age nine and not be able to speak English, or how did he feel when his cousin who he played with in Germany passed away from an illness, or what kind of relationship did he have with his own dad, his mother, his sister? Why didn't I ask him these things when I knew ALS was slowly taking away his ability to speak? Was it because I was in denial that he eventually wouldn't be able to tell me these things? I'm starting to realize what regret feels like. It doesn't feel good.

Thank god he saved all this stuff though and gave us something tangible to hold onto. The things we found are like buried treasure and it's way better than nothing. My dad liked to throw stuff away. My mom is always blaming him for trashing things from our childhood, like old toys, costumes, books, etc. I guess we should be thankful that he decided to save a few things for us to treasure.