The Universal Woman

Visiting Rosemary moved us out of where we were, into where we found out we wanted to be. Or, you could argue, it got us in trouble.

Judy and I went to see Rosemary-at-home, in our volunteer capacity for dog rescue. [What kind of dog would be happiest in the home? is one way of explaining it. You don’t want to place a dog with arthritis in a tri-level home with stairs to each entrance and bedrooms on the topmost level.]

Rosemary’s back hallway was one step up from the yard, so there was no arthritis factor. “Oh my, oh my,” Judy and I said to each other. “Oh, my.” What awed us was Rosemary’s matter of fact creation of everyday life. All she did was answer our off-topic comments.

“How did you get the walls to have that swirl of colors? Like light and shadow, or silk, or water color.” “Oh that?” Rosemary waved a hand at the walls, “Faux painting. I could show you how to do that in a short time: maybe half an hour. You could do that easily.” Judy and I looked at each other. I know my painting range.

We talked about dog and person happiness, but unlike other home visits, we ranged across the Home Depot/Lowe’s/Mendard’s/Big Lots/Goodwill/Ace Hardware universe. “How did you install the tile?” “Got a sledge hammer because the people who had this house before had poured a 2” layer of concrete on the kitchen floor to level it.” “Who’s the person in the photograph?” “I don’t know, but I like old pictures, the kind that would have been taken when the house was built [1914], so when I find them together, I don’t throw the photo away.” She slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the sofa to lift a photo of some people at a picnic from the wall, “And sometimes there’s inscriptions on the back. I wouldn’t want to lose those.” We looked at the penciled words in a old-style handwriting: Washington Park, June 6, 1910.

She was comfortable where she was, with all she had accomplished. We were comfortable in our role of prying questioners. “That panel of stained glass matches the colors in the kitchen.” “It should; I made it in the studio upstairs where I teach. It’s not hard.” Having spent a summer cutting shreds of stained glass, I knew that the theory was not hard; it’s the cutting line that doesn’t always run true. It’s not easy to create a panel 3 x 4 ft where all the pieces need to match their paper patterns.

“The tin tiles on the walls aren’t part of the original house?” “I bought it as a condemned property; it was there at the time I needed a house. There were holes in the walls, and mice running across the floors. It took a couple years. Pretty soon I’ll be finished inside, then I’m going to work on the yard – more flower gardens.” She paused and touched the cookbook open on her counter. She shrugged and smiled. “I like doing it. The countertop, for instance: I happened to find a company that had the right size piece of granite, to fit in the corner of the kitchen.”

One of Rosemary’s gifts was that she made things seem possible (I could go to Home Depot for materials and accomplish a similar project); another was that she didn’t promote herself; the other was that each of the projects had worked toward her goal: creating the home. And the one that won us completely over was her sense of humor, “Sorry about the little branches on the front porch. They’re doing road work in the next block, so all the squirrels that used to live there, moved here for the summer. They didn’t want to be displaced, and they’re going kind of schizophrenic, so they keep chewing off little branches.”

She had a suggestion, too, on dog motion sickness (aka turning green around the eyes and depositing their last meal on the car’s back seat) to add to our list of helpful solutions. (“Give them a tiny bit of ginger”).
I’m not faux painting, but we did go hunting for granite and old picture frames. Seeing someone else’s work toward goals can do that. We step out of our routine, take a deep breath at what our eyes see, and go back home looking around with a new perspective and belief the projects in our imagination can turn out fine, even if we’re beginning them on dreams and courage. Thank you, Rosemary.