“I used to hate cats. Now I have one.”

I thought to myself, you are my age and all of a sudden you can accept something you previously hated?

“If you can change, maybe I can. I was talking to a friend this morning and I asked her if she thought memory inhibited change. Instead of new thoughts, all I have are old ones.”

Yesterday I slipped with my wood chisel, and as I was watching the circle of blood grow under my jeans, I flashed back to an errant ax swing when I was eleven. I was chopping a fallen branch in the backyard that was supported on one side by our neighbor’s fence. When I missed, the corner of the ax bounced off my knee. Same place the chisel hit. What was I doing in my backyard in Cincinnati, when I should be here in Arlington?

My response to Maria was a non-sequitor, and equally so to Ginger, but of late, I’d been chewing on the concept of change. As in, why I can’t.

I met Maria once before, briefly, and that was while I was preparing to do work for a friend of hers. I had a cabinet to repair, decks to stain, and other odds and ends. Maria told me about her screened porch that she wanted to remodel and asked if I’d give her an estimate. So here I was, standing in that porch, discussing what changes to make.

But estimates, such as this was, are not only about cost, but about who is going to share your home for the month. When I knocked on the door, instead of inviting me to walk through her house, she motioned to the screen porch on the far side. When we talked about the renovation, it was, oh so dry and clinical. I wondered how to collapse this distance between us. But Maria took the lead when she sat down in her blue director’s chair, and while she did not offer me a seat, I promptly plopped into the chair across from her.

It was then that we dropped the cost of glazing and I learned that she was a school psychologist. She loved her work, not to mention her work hours which mimic her children’s.
“Good hours, summers off, and long term relationships. Teachers stay forever.” I said.

“But six people left this year.”

People close to her, and not only did they leave, but some were retiring. And retiring, we both agreed, adds a dimension to leaving. Not that she wants to retire, but it’s a different kind of moving on. After retirement, there is but one more transition. She was unhappy with the loss and I mentioned that Diane had left her job after ten years. I told her that Diane’s friends had that same, where have you gone feeling.

Gone too was the suburban white noise of nearby lawn mowers which allowed the crisp, cool air of what could have been an autumn day to settle around us. Maria, it seemed to me, had spent a lifetime guarding her emotions but we were now engaged in a gentle two-step as we talked about loss. We were finally making the contact that I needed because just as the customer has to trust me, I too have to feel comfortable.

We also danced around the reason for creating a four season living space out of this porch and, as it often does, it was all about the TV.

“If we move the TV to the porch we reclaim our living room.”
I kept thinking, toss out the TV, don’t give it a room. Finally I told her that is what we had done and that elicited the usual.

“I don’t watch much, but,” she said, “we watch every Red Sox game.”

With a heavy emphasis on every.

“It’s a shared experience then, with your husband?”

“And my kids.” She has an eleven year old son and a younger daughter.

“I listen to the games on the radio, just as I did growing up. I like the rhythm.”

“We watch every minute, every pitch. At that level it becomes almost an art form.”

Okay, I had given her the communal excuse, but I wasn’t buying baseball as art form. I thought, spend those three hours in the MFA if you want art form.

“I have a plumber and a flooring person. Can you work with them?”

Meaning, as a contractor, could I accept her subs, and her supervising them, thus saving her money.

“Sure, I can do this anyway you want.”

“I want the carpentry done right. It needs to look good when it’s done, that’s my expectation. The last guy I had did terrible work and I can’t go through that again. I’d complain and he would say “A blind man can’t see it.’
“Could have been a joke.” I offered.

“It was, the first time.”

“But Maria, you told me your expectations, now I can tell you mine.”

Never have I had this opportunity and I wasn’t going to let it slip by. Early in our conversation about her porch remodel, she told me how long it was taking her to paint her dining room. Even her husband was telling her to, “Just finish it!” Sure, cutting around cabinet glass takes time, but finicky folks can be the worst to work for.

“That you get paid on time,” she offered.

“Yes, but …”, and I didn’t know how to continue. Instead I told her the story of the woman in Cambridge who, with a stocking wrapped around her hand, crawled on her hands and knees, feeling under her radiators after the floor refinisher had applied his third coat of polyurethane. She too, was a psychologist.

“Don’t worry, I’m not super obsessive.”

Although I didn’t entirely trust her, that short interchange would help craft our space together. As I left through the same screen door I turned and asked, “You really don’t hate cats anymore?”

“I didn’t say that, but I sure miss my cat when she’s not around. Reminds me of all my relationships.”

I laughed, she laughed harder but tried to take it back.

“I don’t really mean that.”
Unselfconscious, if only briefly, but we made a connection. If we worked together, we’d begin as friends.