How long does a couple live together to get to the point that their common history usurps their past. The point where more of life has been spent in the past than in the future? How long does it take for each little glory, each little intimacy, each little spat and argument to edge out slowly, slowly a step at a time into a common conscious?
Do these little instances draw from some personal, emotional change purse only to grow with interest as they fill a common experience? There must be a tipping point where the past has filled the common cup so much that the rest of life together is as much a reflection of the past as the future.
For the lucky it is only remembered small glories that fill the cup, for the less fortunate it is the spats and arguments that shape the future. For the blessed, they possess a humor that glues all those glories and arguments together in a common treasured experience greater than their separate lives.
Pauline and Larry Brady, a sixty-ish couple, survived Katrina. It looks probably so did their marriage.
Years ago Larry found this house nestled on a high ground near the Pearl River. The house has to be over a hundred years old. Since it was so old and free of any obvious past flood damage, Larry convinced Pauline to buy it. They never worried about hurricanes since the house had this history. They build an addition to it and enjoyed the quiet, pastoral existence of Pearlington until late August 2005.
When we came upon the house it stood unused except to hold boxes and boxes of floor-ravaged possessions of Pauline, Larry and daughter; and that musty smell. Everything was moldy or decaying. When one looks through the boxes there are old paperback books, childhood books, certificates of accomplishment, photographs, rusty tools, toys, almost anything a family might collect over twenty or thirty years of living together.
Our job is to clean out the house and assist Larry and Pauline to refurbish the house into a new home. The first step is work with the homeowner to remove all the unnecessary contents and strip damaged walls.
While we cleaned it out Larry would say, “Let’s get this done before Pauline gets over here. Save that box, put those books over here so we can put them in that storage shed out back.”
Larry agonized over every piece of life we picked up to toss into the pile out on the lawn to wait on the delivery of the dumpster. Larry's decisions were agonizing; each one seemed to erase or save a piece of life.
On other occasions while we cleaned it out Pauline would say, “Let’s get this done before Larry gets over here. Toss that box, put those books over there in your wheel barrow so we can put them in the dumpster pile out front.”
Pauline never thought twice about her decision, her directives to toss those pieces of the past into the pile on the lawn to wait on the delivery of the dumpster had the surety of the mind of an Islamic prince swinging a raised scimitar to decapitate an infidel.
After our crew finished this labor last week, I visited the home today with my two wonderful new work site managers, Jessie and Michael.
“We better call Larry and Pauline before we drop by.”
I fished my cell phone out of its holster and dialed.
A woman’s voice answered, “Hello?”
“Hello Mrs. Brady. This is Henry, we are in the area and wondered if we could drop by and see how the cleanup is going?”
“Who?”
“Henry Paris with PDA. Remember, I came by a few weeks ago.”
“Oh yes. Yes, come on over.”
We were only about a half-mile from the house.
“OK, we will be there is a few minutes.”
As I pulled into their driveway, Larry was walking out beside a newly stacked pile of firewood. He waved hello and walked with a spry step towards us. Larry is the kind of guy who has probably ten or twenty unfinished projects, each a magnificent dream, each easily achievable because the fellow is an engineer, but his list grows far faster than his hands and feet can manage. He plans to redo this house himself. Our job is to keep him from self-destruction and do much of it for him.
He leads us to the house and unlocks the front door. I walk in and am quite impressed. The house is emptied of most of the things that filled every room the last time I was here. We walk through remarking and discussing all the little architectural oddities. The firebrick pad in the rear bedroom and the cutout in the wood wall paneling that indicate an old pot bellied stove must have stood there. We note the fireplace hidden in the wall in the kitchen.
The house itself built of old rough-cut heartwood, even the interior wall paneling. This paneling and the massive cypress girders and joists withstood Katrina’s soaking quite well. There are a few spots of mold to manage, but in Larry’s view, and one I do not entirely oppose, many of the rooms can be salvaged. Pauline on the other hand is on record as saying “Strip it all and put drywall up!”
Again, the questions, over three years old, still lurk below the surface of conversation. As usuaI I ask, “Mr. Brady, did you and Pauline stay behind? How high did the water get in here?”
Mr. Brady points towards the ceiling in the side room that we are standing and states, “Well the house is sort of warped out of level,” and walks into the dining room for a better display.
He extends his arm and touches the wall about 3 or 4 inches below the ceiling. “The water came up about here,” pointing towards the remains of an electrical box in the ceiling of the room. He continues, “It beat the dickens out of the chandelier that used to be here.”
“So, you and your wife decided to wait out the storm and not leave?”
“Yes. This place had never been flooded as long as anyone can remember, I thought we’d be safe.”
“What did you do when the water started rising?”
“When the extension I built on the rear of the house began to shift as water rose up to about the floor level, I started to worry that this might be bad.” He pointed to the empty patio behind the house. Karina floated the extension to the house away to some other part of the neighborhood.
“We went up into the attic.”
“What would you have done had the water risen even higher?”
“We might have found ourselves swimming in the neighborhood. I’d have broken out the louvers in the attic vent in the end of roof to get out.”
I stood here imaging this situation of Larry and Pauline crouching on that old dirty attic over ten feet of swirling salty floodwater.
“Larry, I’ll bet your wife was screaming, ‘I can’t believe you convinced me to stay. We should have gotten out of Pearlington when they told us to leave; we are both going to die. I can’t believe I agreed to let you buy this house.’ ”
“Yes, you are pretty much right, that’s about what she said. Thank goodness we can laugh about it now," he said with a hint on uncertainty in his voice.
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