Mayday! Mayday!
I've never even wondered why you hear folks say "Mayday!" on the radio in movies
when their plane is going down or their boat is in distress. I decided, on Sunday, that
"Mayday" must be an old phonetic for "Marine Disaster". Of course, in this day of
Google, there is no reason to remain ignorant - we can find out such things in just
a second. So let's do so...nope. I'm wrong again!
Turns out that "Mayday" is a
corruption of the French, "maidez", meaning "help me!"
Which was a pretty good exclamation of the day today.
Getting the house ready for sale is one way of doing a personal inventory - you find out
just how many things you have let slide, overlooked, ignored, or shoved out of memory
with extreme prejudice and active, vigorous denial.
Like this doorframe, in Silas' bathroom. Sometime in the distant past, Maia ate the door.
It wasn't her fault - Ethel locked her in the bathroom for the day. I've spent time in Silas'
bathroom, and the olfactory offensiveness of that location would force me to try to chew
my way out, as well.
But after the fact, I simply didn't see it until we walked through the house attempting to get
the place ready to put on the market. And then it became One More Thing That I Haven't
Attended To. And time was up; church was out; there was no more ignoring the fact that
we had to do something. So we bought a new piece of molding, and I cut some boards
to fit, and did some spackling and painting and now it looks as good as new. Almost.
There's a lot of stuff like that - Uta tried to chew her way out of the laundry room, back
in 1998. Lucy has tried to chew her way out of the kitchen, just recently. Silas kicked
a hole in the wall during a temper tantrum when he was little (come to think of it, one
when he was big, as well). Lots and lots of damage done by Pucketts, bipedal and
quadripedal, over the last seven years, all of which has to be attended to now.
And the more work we get done, the nicer the house looks, and FEELS. Almost
like forgiveness - as we clean up the wreckage of the past, the house seems to
be sighing a sigh of relief, and releasing some built-up tension. It leaves me
wondering - do we really want to leave?
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