Solstice, Part Five

(This is Part Five of a series.  Part One is here.  Part Two is here.  Part Three is here.  Part Four is here.)

Diary of a Small Contractor: Quail Eggs and Pomegranates

Saturday, December 20, 1986
Daylight: 9 hours, 33 minutes, 43 seconds

I light a pilot light for my neighbors Jake and Mindy.  They've just returned after investing every last penny for plane tickets to New York accompanied by a crate full of hand-sewn sheepskin jackets.  "How'd it go?" I ask them.

"I'm in the wrong state," Mindy says.  She's been selling her handcrafted sheepskin jackets at California craft fairs for years.  "In New York they don't just admire what I make, they can justify it.  The weather's cold and there's a ton of rich people."

I tell them there's no charge for lighting the pilot, but Jake stuffs a twenty into my hand.  These folks have been poor, scuffling, just getting by.  Today they feel good.

At Peter's house, I wire a wall heater.  Almost finished there. 

We pile into the family van — Rose, 3 kids, me — drive to a tree ranch near San Gregorio and cut down a 12-foot pine, paying with the crinkled twenty dollar bill.  Back home, setting up, the entire house smells of sweet sap.

Sunday, December 21, 1986
Daylight: 9 hours, 33 minutes, 38 seconds

From friends, we have a puppy.  Got him earlier this week.  The kids have named him Oak — or Oakie, still under debate — because his color matches our hardwood floor.  I would name him Chew or Chewie because he attacks shoes and ankles and whisk brooms.

Late in the day, alone, I walk a couple miles from my house into the La Honda watershed.  There's a ridge up there with a view I love.  The fog flows into the valleys while I stand above it all in the red glow of sunset.  Sounds rise to my ears.  A half mile downhill, children are playing, shouting from houses just at the edge of the fog.  From the opposite side of the ridge I hear the rush of Mindego Creek in a deep canyon.  From shadows in the weeds nearby, coyotes are yapping like clowns.

It's fully dark — and foggy — by the time I return to my house.  There on the landing outside the kitchen door are two dark-haired puppies.  Seeing me, they run up and bounce against my legs.

La Honda is a dumping ground for abandoned pets, and they always seem to end up at my door.  I think it's posted on fire hydrants, spreading the rumor that I'm a soft touch.

Well, I'm not.  In fact I'm so hard-hearted that I won't even allow them into the house.  Instead, I set out a bowl of kibble and a bucket of water, then find a cardboard box and line it with a blanket so they can curl up together and keep warm on the porch.

Monday, December 22, 1986
Daylight: 9 hours, 33 minutes, 37 seconds
 
The puppies are still on the porch, which also serves as a mudroom.  They've eviscerated a pair of my boots.

Before breakfast I run along Pescadero Road in the rain with my wife Rose.  When we return, the roof is leaking.  Our beanbag chair is soaking up water.  In a downpour I go up the ladder and jam metal flashing under broken shingles.  Fixed — until I can do better.  Now breakfast, and let's light the logs in the fireplace.

Oakie the indoor puppy chews on a rawhide bone.  The two porch puppies chase each other in circles and overturn their bucket of water.   The kids prepare and put on a puppet show.  Rose bakes cookies and her incredible homemade granola — every year, we pass out holiday food baskets to neighbors and friends.  Jesse, my older son, age 10, helps me build a shelf for my growing collection of poetry and computer books.

It's your basic rainy day at home.  The solstice passes, unseen behind clouds.

Tuesday, December 23, 1986
Daylight: 9 hours, 33 minutes, 40 seconds
 
At Peter's house I clean up some final details, replace a faulty 4-way switch.  I'm done!  Already finished are the carpenters Oshay and Junior, the tile setters Greg and his father Jerry — each worker a subplot, gone but a part of this dwelling where we have embedded our sweat, blood, and pencil marks.  Our stories.  Our spirits, too.

Sheba is housecleaning today.  She's like a serialized saga, new episode every Tuesday.  In the past month she's gotten married — not to Greg — and visibly has become a lower case "b," not necessarily by the groom.  It's a credit to the effectiveness of birth control that she wasn't knocked up any earlier in the last 6 years.  In late-December she's wearing a halter and soccer shorts.  Oddly, she never had a super body.  Something about her, though, has always exuded sexiness.  In 3 years she'll be old enough to buy alcohol.  She says her dad is out of prison and is repairing cars instead of stealing them.

There's a Christmas tree surrounded by brightly-wrapped packages.  Judy is a Catholic but mostly she's a Christmas junkie.  "When it comes to the holidays, I believe in wretched excess," she says as she hands 3 gifts to Sheba, one to me.

I write an invoice for Peter.

Peter writes a big fat check.  

Last nail driven,
sawdust swept.
In each house,
many stories.
Building shelter,
making children,
we construct
our cluttered lives.

The pagan festival of light.  It must be the passing of the solstice that makes me so happy.  That, and a fat check.  Tomorrow I'll buy pomegranates — and maybe quail eggs if I can find them.



(Continued here...)