Of COVID, Ceilings, and Harmonicas

 

I love the New Year. It’s a chance to take stock of life, think about big projects, and to re-read all of your favorite books that you already read the previous year but want to read again. When we found out that J had COVID, I thought that this would maybe even be helpful for getting the New Year off on the right foot.

I downloaded an audiobook of Pride and Prejudice and started work on masking up our living room and kitchen. A few years ago I installed recessed lighting in the living room (also during a slow January week) but never got around to repainting the scuffed ceiling after J’s Dad helped up finish up the drywall repairs.

The kitchen has needed a fresh coat of ceiling paint for years. We had a waste line leak repeatedly before Felix was born, and that meant an enormous drywall patch where the ceiling was leaking through the light. When we had COVID two years ago in March the ceiling was damaged further by a plumbing project of mine that went awry. (I tried to clean out the tub drain, broke it, and had to rebuild the whole thing.)

Actually painting over the repaired ceilings would be a final farewell to those long hours of cutting, cleaning, puzzling, driving to Lowe’s, and generally fretting about how to keep water from leaking from our ceilings.

While J convalesced in our room I put in my earbuds (rejoining the Bennet family in Meryton) and masked, scrubbed, sanded, primed, and painted.

I don’t love working on the house or fixing things for their own sake—it usually makes me freshly thankful for my cushy white collar job. But it was nice to see the ceiling cleaned up and shining as I peeled the tape off at the end. A job well done.

Yesterday morning, with J mostly on the mend, I took yet another COVID test. (A daily occurrence since “exposed” in order to be able to go into work.) And lo, there were two lines. I really feel fine—just a tickle in my throat and a slightly runny nose. My first thought was that I’d be able to finish Pride and Prejudice sooner than I thought.

“NOO!” yelled Owen, “my harmonica!!”

Owen has been begging for a harmonica ever since Christmas, and I’ve pulled out every trick in the book to defer him. He told me that he wanted a harmonica for Christmas, and I warned him that harmonicas aren’t something that you read, wear, or need.

Then he wanted to spend his Christmas cash on a harmonica, and I said that we weren’t going to go to the store today. No, I had never seen a harmonica on Amazon either. Maybe he should ask again later.

Maybe he should ask again in two weeks.

I pretended that the Amazon site was broken, then didn’t let him have my phone so that he could see if he could get it to work.

“Dad, I REALLY want a harmonica.”

“Yes, Owen…I know.”

Several years ago I wrote a six word story (modeled on the famous Hemmingway six word story: “For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” My six word tragedy was: “Owen found the deliberately hidden harmonica.”

When I opened up my folder for the next Masterworks concert I saw that on the final page of some (dumb) contemporary piece I’m supposed to switch from trumpet to “Harmonica in C” and blow long chords. (Good thing I spent all that money on a conservatory education.)

“Owen,” I said, “if they give me a harmonica to play at my concert next week, you can have it when I’m done.”

And that’s why he was heartbroken when I got the news that I’d be staying home for another week.

J was far enough in her isolation and well enough yesterday to leave the house masked, and she walked up to the local craft store. As a reward for the boys for tolerating/surviving a week at home with sick parents and half of the house masked off for painting she brought them all some color by numbers and…two harmonicas. Owen and Felix were ecstatic.

“KHREEEK!”

“Thank you so much, Mommy!”

“KHREEEEEEK!”

“Aren’t we supposed to talk about these things before one of us just goes and—”

“KKKKKHREEEEEEEEKKKK!”

 

They camped out in a fort last downstairs last night, so when I came down at 6 to have coffee and read I could already hear the very soft, barely whispered “khreeeeeks” coming out of the tent that they had made while I tried to concentrate on my book.

After breakfast I decided that it might be more restful anywhere else other than the inside the house, so I volunteered to shovel the driveway, reasoning that I wasn’t technically breaking isolation rules if I stayed on my own property. I pulled on snowpants and big boots, then put in my noise cancelling earbuds and hit play on Pride and Prejudice.

I’d only been out for five minutes or so when I looked up and saw J waving from the front step. I paused Pride and Prejudice and took out the earbud.

“There’s water leaking into the kitchen from the ceiling.”

I thought for a moment that she was kidding. The ceiling I’d just finally put the last touch of repair on? The ceiling that leaked the last time that I had COVID?

I came inside, and sure enough:

Drip—drip—drip---drip,

“KHREEEEEK!!”

It wasn’t coming from the spot under the tub. It was coming from light fixture that had also leaked when the waste line had leaked. The waste line that we had FIXED!

I went upstairs through a storm of blasting harmonicas and inspected the supply lines in James’ closet. And then I walked into the bathroom and figured out what had happened. It wasn’t a plumbing issue. It was a James issue.

James, like a true pre-teen, had taken a long shower. And he had done it with the shower curtain and the liner both tucked outside the tub, thus ensuring a minor flood in the bathroom.

I started to take apart the fixture to see how bad the flooding was.

“KHKREEEK! KHREEEK!”

A puddle of urine-smelling brown water that had pooled in the glass of the fixture spilled out all over me, dribbling onto the kitchen floor.

“KHREEEK! KHREEK!”

I hunted through the basement until I found the right circuit and cut the power to the kitchen. Then I found screws in the fixture base and disconnected it from the ceiling, sloshing more of the gritty waste water onto the freshly painted ceiling in the process.

“KHREEEEK! “KHREEEEK!”

After wiping everything dry and ensuring that nothing more was going to leak through, I wrestled with the fixture over my head (“KHREEEEEEK!”) blindly for several minutes before giving up and retrieving a ladder from the garage so that I could feel my way back onto the bracket.

“KHREEEEEEEK!”

I have a new six word story:

For sale.

Two harmonicas.

Harmonicists included.