Features

Column: Grateful for a Roof Overhead and Uneven Floorboards Under My Feet By SUSAN PARKER

Tuesday November 01, 2005

In the morning, before anyone is awake, I go downstairs and make coffee. From the living room I hear the pop and bubble of my husband’s oxygen machine. In the kitchen I feel the cold, uneven, sticky floorboards under my bare feet and I am annoyed. 

At some point the boards will need to be replaced, and not just these individual boards, but the entire kitchen floor because it’s beginning to show signs of stress. We don’t have the money to buy new flooring, but when we have to replace it, what should we replace it with? 

Ralph’s wheelchair is heavy and damaging. It puts holes in the plaster and drywall, it breaks cabinet windows, shoves the stove out of alignment, knocks lamps and pictures and what-nots off shelves. Area rugs are a liability (the wheelchair chews them up), and wall-to-wall carpeting is not an option for a kitchen in constant use by a house full of first-class slobs. 

Tile won’t work because it sometimes cracks, and because in-between tile grout cleaning is not my forte. We should purchase linoleum, real battleship linoleum, made from linseed oil and other stuff, not the fake linoleum that comes in long, fat rolls, made to mimic tile, but doesn’t actually look or act the least bit like tile. Glued down with gummy adhesive, the wear and tear of an electric wheelchair will cause it to split, rip, and roll up at the corners. But real linoleum is expensive, and its shiny, seemingly benign, clean surface reminds me of hospital hallways, ER, ICU and Dr. X’s office where we go once a month to have the tube inserted in Ralph’s bladder replaced. 

I so don’t want to be reminded of Kaiser Permanente’s Urology Department in the morning when I’m waiting for the coffeemaker to finish its job. 

I stare at the hissing plastic and glass machine and because I’m desperate to get away from the uneven floor and thoughts of doctors and medical emergencies, I do what I always do: I pour myself a small cup of coffee even though it isn’t finished percolating. 

One of these days I will need to learn how to use the autotimer on the coffeemaker so the coffee will be done before I come downstairs. But that won’t happen in a million years, like me cleaning grout, or learning the different functions on my digital camera, or how to use the text messaging feature on the cell phone. 

I sip the coffee. It isn’t hot, and the flavor tastes sharp, acidic, and bitter. 

I go upstairs and find my slippers, slip them on, and return to the kitchen for more coffee. Now I can’t feel the uneven boards beneath my feet. I fill my mug and enter the dining room where I look up and admire the newly plastered ceiling, work done by our neighbor, Tondre. 

With the ceiling no longer full of holes and cracks and hanging chads of plaster, I vow to spend less time looking down and complaining about the uneven kitchen floorboards, and more time looking up, thankful for no water stains, fissures, or views of the upstairs bathroom pipes; grateful for a floor beneath my feet, and a permanent roof above my head.