Rise: How a House Built a Family(57)
“Brain freeze!” Jada yelled. “I have brain freeze.”
Roman ran in circles, laughing and drooling strawberry slushy. “My brain froze! I a ice cube in my head! Brain slushies!”
Just when I thought we had processed the last of Dad’s gifts, he came in dragging two full-size coolers. “Turn the oven on,” he said. “I brought turkeys!”
Yes, that was plural. Turkeys.
We baked through the rest of the day and all night. Then we stripped the turkeys clean, filling plastic bags with meat for sandwiches on the job site. We’d eat turkey and cheese until we gobbled and sprouted feathers.
Hope and Drew piled a final load of bags next to the pantry. I didn’t look inside, happy that whatever we had it didn’t need to be cut, shredded, blended, or stored in the now-packed refrigerator and extra freezer. The rest of Dad’s treasures would be revealed soon enough.
Our first few days on the job site with Dad were spent planning more than building. It was no surprise that some of my original plans weren’t the best use of space or materials, and Dad was nothing if not frugal.
Both of my parents believed in improving standard designs or inventing new ones. They dug a full-size swimming pool—with shovels—when I was six. They made plans for a build-it-yourself motorized glider and talked about building a car with a kit from a magazine. They fashioned custom tools and devices, Dad with metal and concrete, Mom with wood and fabric. They stood in the store planning how to modify and improve an item before they even made it to the checkout line. “Cut this part off, add a wheel here, put a rubber handle on this, and it will be perfect!” Dad would say, and Mom would nod, and rework the plan on the way to the car. They gardened and hunted, home-canning vegetables, fruits, and meat. They made our meals and furniture from scratch. Most important, they taught me that I could build anything I could imagine. Granted, they didn’t expect me to dream quite so big.
“There’s a better way to get this plywood on the exterior. Safer,” Dad said. Then he drilled two small holes in the center of a four-by-eight sheet of plywood and threaded a rope through them while I gritted my teeth, convinced that he was ruining the sheet. “Now you can pull it up from inside the house, just one person guiding it from a ladder. You’ll have a lower risk of head injuries at least.”
He was right, of course. “What about the holes from the rope? Won’t they let cold air in?”
“Those little pinpricks? It’ll be a damn miracle if you don’t have gaps big enough to put your head through in other spots. If they bother you, glue on a piece of foam or caulk them. No biggie. Least of your problems.”
Perspective. That’s what Dad offered. Not always the perfect opinion, but always an intelligent one. Having someone else to bounce ideas off was a relief. I wasn’t alone anymore.
Roman toddled up after we had most of the downstairs plywood in place on a Friday night. “I a doughnut!” He was completely naked and had rolled himself in sand. Sugar-coated. The section of our sand pile that I’d roped off for him was his new favorite play place, even though I wasn’t sure if I preferred it over mud.
Dad had brought a large collection of toy cars and trucks he’d picked up from curb trash on his daily walks. “Can’t see any reason to put all that in a landfill when there’s a lot of good use in it.”
Dad’s multiple sclerosis was impossible to ignore. He was still strong and had eased so much of my stress, but he had also added a sackful of new worries. He had to use a cane a lot of the time because he was off balance. When he tired out he got dizzy all at once, like a wave that knocked him down wherever he was. “When it comes over me, I’m done just like that. Have to sit down awhile. There’s no arguing with it like you can with the regular kind of tiredness.”
I arranged lawn chairs in strategic locations and forbade him to climb on ladders. He used the chairs and the ladders. One out of two isn’t bad, I suppose.
Every other night he injected himself in the stomach with interferon. It wasn’t a cure, but there was a small chance it would slow the progression of the disease and reduce the frequency of his weakness spells. He paid a high price with side effects, but bravely continued, since it was the only possible relief for the wicked turn his own nerve cells had taken.
He was tough, though, and he gave me the confidence to tackle impossible things like framing the three-car garage. I had put it off because the garage floor slab was four inches lower than the house, and the step down made everything more complicated. The step and some differences in the ceiling joists would make the ceiling tall enough for the garage doors while leaving the upstairs all a single level. In short, it was a complicated section to frame, and expensive because of the taller studs—each had to be hand-cut to exactly the right length—and the heavy headers above the two garage doors.
I had ordered our ceiling joists premade and was happier now than ever with the decision. They supported a lot of weight and needed to have enough room for the HVAC ducts and plumbing to run between the two stories. They had been ready for weeks by the time we were ready for them.
Dad supervised the joist delivery and a crane to lift them into place while I was at the office. I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw them. The structure felt a lot more homelike even though the joists looked more like a rose trellis than a ceiling or floor. And as much as I loved being up out of the mud with the majority of our work, I had started feeling more and more nervous about how far off the ground everything was happening. We weren’t even working on the second story yet and already a minor mistake could cause a serious injury. Why that had never crossed my mind back when we were building the little model house out of sticks, I’ll never know.