Painting the New House
Andrea and I, newly married and expecting our first child, bought our first home in April of 1996 in Elk Grove, California. The house had been built in 1988 and, while solid, clearly needed some love before we moved in.
Given my lovely wife’s advanced state of pregnancy, painting was firmly in the category of things she could not — and should not — be doing. So I eagerly attacked the project before and after my regular workdays, with periodic help from my dad.
On this particular day, we were tackling the kitchen.
Dad and I had just returned from Home Depot with five gallons of paint. The room was prepped, taped, and ready. I dipped my brush and proudly applied the first stroke to the wall.
The paint was white.
Not off-white. Not eggshell. This was white-white. I’m talking Miami Vice white. Stark white. Wear-sunglasses-indoors white.
Naturally, I picked up the pace. The faster I painted, the faster the kitchen would be done.
My dad watched quietly for a moment, then said, “Stop.”
Stop?
“We should let Andrea see this first.”
Why? Why would we do that? It looked great. Perfect, even. Why invite complications?
Ignoring my protestations entirely, my dad raised his voice and called out, “Andrea, can you come in here a minute?”
I immediately asked him why he’d do that.
He calmly replied — with the wisdom of a seasoned husband and father — “If we paint this whole room and Andrea doesn’t like it, we’ll just have to paint it again.”
Fine. He had a point.
Andrea arrived, took one look, and instantly did not appreciate the stark white.
Back to Home Depot we went.
I was told the new color was “peach.” Or maybe “face paint.” Upon further review — both then and now — it was pink.
Which, it turns out, coordinated perfectly with the salmon-colored carpet throughout the house and the various shades of pink tile in the entryway and around the fireplace.
This was my first real lesson in homeownership, marriage, and fatherhood preparation:
Sometimes the right move is to stop painting, call your wife into the room, and accept that pink is now part of your life.
Parenthood doesn’t begin when you have answers. It begins when you realize you don’t — and proceed anyway.
More reflections to come. I’m sure there are still buttons I haven’t learned to avoid.
