Roofing Paper
This past month I have been re-shingling the roof of the house and garage.
After work, these long days of early summer, I am up on the roof hammering
away until light goes. I started on the garage roof. Years ago I watched
some roofers for an hour, asked some questions, and then shingled the roof
of the mountain cabin I had built. I'll make my mistakes on the garage
roof, hopefully learn from them and then go at the house roof. The angle
of incline of the various planes of the roof is not very steep. I sit,
brace myself so as not to slip down the roof, nail on a shingle, and then
scooch along a couple feet to get into position to nail on the next one.
I don't go as fast or as efficiently as a professional roofer but the work
slowly gets done.
Today, a Saturday, had me up here in the morning. Then a break during
the high heat of the afternoon, and back up on the roof after dinner. Danny
and Jody help me out sometimes but get out of the work when they can. It
was interesting for them until they learned how to put a shingle down;
after curiosity waned, it was just drudge for them.
Tonight Danny came up on the roof when it began to get dark. The fireworks
at Clifton Heights would begin at nightfall, and the roof is the best place
to see. I put away the roofing tools, got myself a bourbon, and sitting
up there at the roof's peak with him awaited the son et lumiere. Before
the fireworks we noticed other lights; headlighted cars going down the
street, white lights approaching, red going away. Then the first bright
stars, and the crescent waxing moon seen through the leaves of the big
oak to our west. Airplanes next, the higher ones not easily distinguishable
from stars until we could perceive some change of location, the lower airplanes
had white lights blinking and port and starboard green and red lights.
Swiftly flying bats came by us some not four feet away. A larger and
a smaller variety, eight inch wingspan and twelve inch wingspan; in the
gathering dark we could not determine much else, a squeal maybe that we
thought was the bats' voice.
Then the fireflies lit up. I thought maybe they teased the bats with
their light but I know that the bats hunt by sound - emiting higher frequency
than we can hear sonic waves, and understanding, when they are reflected
back to bats' ears, the nature and palatability of whatever reflected
the waves.
The fireflies captured me as much as the gorgeous display of spark and
color rising from Clifton Heights, and Danny also, full of questions about
the speed of light, "What was color?", "...why did the Chinese invent fireworks?",
"Who turned them into guns and bullets and why?", "Where are the airplanes
coming from or going to?", and "Did I like the fireworks that exploded
red and then twinkled down to earth?" It doesn't seem to bother him that
I have hardly an answer. The son and lumiere firing off in his mind gives
me more joy than all the lightning bugs, roman candles, cars and jets and
stars and moon shining with us through this night.
Jody helps me with the roof differently than Danny. I don't know whether
it is a matter of age, Jody closing on seventeen, Danny just twelve. I
think not, I think it is a matter of person and maybe relationship with
their father, me. Jody works alone, near me but independently. He has his
own hammer, lays down, measures and nails his own course of shingles. We
work quietly together and sometimes we work quietly and it doesn't feel
like we're together. I know, at this age, he has to figure out who he is
without me, even in contrast to me. Always he has been the child devoted
to family, liking it when we are all together, especially happy when with
cousins and relatives at holiday gatherings. But part of him has always
been alone, to himself. I sense that working here with him on the roof
but also fishing with him, driving him to work, watching TV together. I
need more talk than he does, I suppose to confirm our unity. I'm happy
when Jody comes up on the roof of his own accord rather than my instruction,
I like to believe he then wants to be with me.
Danny is different to work with. He is happiest when we are working
close together, him giving me the shingles, me driving two nails him the
other two, to make the four going through each shingle. He is voluble.
He is old enough and shrewd to know that if he gets me talking about something
likely I'll forget the work at hand for the length of story or explanation.
I think of times working with my father. I always wanted stories from
him about his boyhood and his own father. I see now that I needed to know
him differently than the stern and serious man those years of his middle
life brought to me as my father. He would sometimes talk of the magical
place (rather the ordinary place of his boyhood that his memories and stories
made magical to me) named Ireland, Donegal, Falcarragh, Doory Lane, the
Bloody Foreland and the Poison Glen. Sheep, horses, cows, heather, gorse
and jumping salmon were all to him the usual stuff of his childhood, but
to city-streets-bred me the stuff of fable, I couldn't hear enough of.
When he was working at home I was his tool getter - "Get me the screwdriver."
"Get me the saw." I don't think he ever let me do anything by myself for
fear it wouldn't be done right. I came to feel inadequate about manual
skills, and was greatly and pleasantly surprised when, as a young husband
and father, I discovered that I had absorbed much learning from watching
my father all those years. I could change a switch, repair a leaky pipe,
fix a balky pilot light on a water heater. We worked, my father and I,
differently than the way in which my two sons have found their way to work
with me.
I fear that this roof will take my whole summer and all the hours in
it. It goes slowly and there is much more to do.
I am beginning to look forward to my hours alone on the roof. I have
developed a rhythm and have discovered the spirit in the physical effort
of this work. It is different than the transcendence of rowing or running.
It has to do with the sky. For a while I am betwixt the home and the sky
and this position has a tension in it. Initially it is the tension of not
falling off the roof to the ground and so leaving the little part of low
down sky that I've penetrated. The first days on the roof left me stiff
and I realized it was because, below the level of consciousness but muscularly
I had to spend a lot of energy finding the body positions that would allow
me to work and not slide down and away.
Next, the sun commands the tempo of work. It owns the skyplace and as
it rises higher in the sky as morning goes, it removes my permit for being
there. At first I tried not to give in. The shingles I have been laying
are black and so absorb much solar radiation. The first afternoon on the
roof left me with scorched feet bottoms - even through the sneakers and
wool socks the heat burned. At twelve or one o'clock the surface of the
roof on a sunny day was much too hot to touch. The abrasive, gravelly surface
of the shingles wore away my fingertips' skin and the heat of the sun then
burned me whenever I laid a hand on the roof.
The rain next was the sky that drove me from the roof. The rain
that was light I ignored. And though I tried to enjoy and be part of the
afternoon thunder and lightning storms, discretion had me do it from under
rather than on the porch roof. One Sunday morning I got caught in a quick
and vicious wind, lightning and rain storm. I took at least part shelter
under an eave, but was relieved when Jody came up to the attic and unlocked
a window through which I crawled.
Then the dark sky that makes me admit the end of day and sends me down.
These were the boundaries that I had to find out about, then within
those I was eventually able to sense the way I could be a roofer. I began
to see myself as asking permission of these elements, the sun and the dark,
the heat of noon, the rain, wind and lightning if I could put a roof between
them and my family. And the answer I sensed was yes, but only if I paid
proper respect to their power and their potential. Now I leave the sky
the noontime hours the sun beams strong, and I don't impatiently push the
work past end of day. I began this work wanting only its end, now I'd rather
it not end at all.
August 2, 1992
The roof is nearly done, the summer is rapidly passing. The garage is
done and the West-facing roof, the East-facing roof, the inglenooks and
their valleys. Only the backroom, then it will be done.
Today I was working on the roof above the backroom when Kathleen handed
the portable phone up to me - it was Thom Gustavson from Bethesda Christian
Street with bad news. He told me that Rob Gibbs was near death at Graduate
Hospital. I left the roof and headed to the hospital.
These past few weeks with Rob have been intense. "Cancer." he was told.
Lung cancer, spreading rapidly. He asked me to help him get in touch with
his family that he had walked away from years and years ago. We found a
brother still alive and in the area. The brother visited and the two made
plans to spend more time with each other. bAnd Rob wanted to go to
the Vietnam Memorial in D.C., to make peace, if his strength would hold.
It didn't. Gibbs made a will, made me executor, saddled me with the worry
of his final wishes, "nothing extraordinary, no tubes or ventilators, just
let them keep me out of pain." Drawn up in legal documents with me as the
one given the responsibility to say when. He didn't even ask me if I would,
could carry that burden. I, both honored by his trust and angry at his
presumption, hurry now to the hospital.
I have been sitting up on the roof most of this summer. The early morning
eastern sun quickly warms the black shingles to uncomfortable heat. The
Birch and the Apple tree begin to shade me late afternoons. Rain comes,
I hammer through the light showers, give it up during the thunderstorms.
The boys, at first helpful, then novelty wearing off, less of their
presence. Kathleen takes no notice. I see her below going off with her
friends, returning from shopping, sunbathing in the back yard, she is not
about roofs at this time in her life. And not much interested in fathers
it seems. She will be going away from home soon, to the University, this
roof will not much longer protect her. It did its job, worn out now in
need of some renewal, it is not her concern.
Kitty is happy I'm up here, better on the roof than someplace else,
getting into trouble, spending money, too far from the nest to be doing
it any good. She knows where I am and knows that a roof is an important
thing for a family to have a good one of.
From up here I've watched in the garden the tiger lilies grow and come
into blossom, fade; the Mulberry tree fill up with mulberries and then
birds. The robins, goldfinches, purple finches, mourning doves take little
note of a man on a roof, they fly by close sometimes, don't swerve to avoid
me.
It has been a good place to spend this summer of my forty-fifth year,
kind of by myself but near the ones I love most, and about something for
them.
At the hospital, Rob breathing hard, eyes rolled back. He is responsive
to my touch. I don't know whether he hears me. I talk to the oncologist
who is at home but graceful with this interruption of his Sunday. "Lung
function decreasing...anoxia...moribund...tumor in brain...lymphatic system
involvement. Chemotherapy futile.....Intubation? Resuscitation if, when?"
In peace, I speak for the man in bed: Moribund - bound for death.
Marge O'Connor comes, Rob holds her hand tightly. She blesses the scene
with tears, she has known the man through high and low times. The labored
breathing; the attending doctor says maybe a higher concentration of oxygen
would make him more comfortable, the doctor prepares. And then a convulsion,
brief and a second one. The doctor whispers 'seizure' and calls for Atavan.
But a stiffening and then repose. In the next seconds there is an exhalation,
and another final giving away of breath. His hand lets go of Marge's and
she knows before the doctor knows. He listens, no heart sounds, the penlight
shines on fixed pupils. He asks me if there is to be an attempt at resuscitation.
I shake my head, no. Witnessing a death and allowing a death are not the
same, and I tremble with this no I'm asked to speak. The doctor records
his sorrow and leaves. Marge prays and leads me to ask for prayers "...for
us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death." This hour, this August
2, 1992, this bright summer afternoon, past the time of tiger lily blooming,
in the time of flower of the Rose of Sharon, the hibiscus of summer's end.
Late this afternoon I am back on my perch above the house. Down the
line of shingle I go - place, measure, adjust, nail, nail, nail, nail and
then the next shingle. The shade of the apple tree moves over to shade
me as I slowly make my way toward the top of the roof. I think of Rob and
I wonder about heavens and hells, the ones we live in and the ones were
bound for, and the sun's heat on a black shingle roof and the ripening
apples unfallen from the tree.
August 9
The roof is done. Danny drove in the last nail at 11:48 AM. These shingles
are guaranteed to last for twenty years. If I'm still around, I tell Dan,
I'll be too old then to replace them, he will have to do it for me. He
tells me to save up so we can get a real roofer --- tough kid.
He will be thirty two when these shingles let in the rain. A wife, kids
of his own maybe, another roof to worry about by then. At least he said
"we". I plant my hope on such a seed.
August 15
Raining all day today and much of yesterday. And none of it came inside.
Nineteen years and fifty-one weeks to go on the shingles' guarantee, but
so far so good. Six years ago, today, we moved into this house. Today,
Catholics observe, or at least used to, the feast of the Assumption of
the Blessed Mother Into Heaven. Odd way to name that trip.
In a couple ways these past months for me on the roof have been
a climb into heaven. The ridge of the roof is about as far as I can take
this presumption for myself without some outside help. Robert Frost wrote,
. . . I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
from Birches
My mother and my aunts always made it a point to take us to the shore
on this feast of the Assumption so that we could dip our feet in the ocean's
waters. I had and have no idea what the connection was between the Blessed
Mother's feastday and the toe-dipping, or what blessing was suppose to
befall you after getting wet feet on August 15th. When I lived in Falcarragh
in 1970, Aunt Bridget and some of her lady friends went to St Finian's
Well in Errirouey this day to also dip their feet. I asked her why she
didn't dip her feet in the ocean, only a couple hundred yards from her
house, as her sisters-in law over in America did, instead of going all
the way to Errirouey. I don't think she had any response for me except
a black look.
Well, I'll make an end to these thoughts here. I want to go out
of this house, now, this dry house and to thank the rain before its done,
for letting me have this space to keep my family dry. I'll do it barefoot,
dip my feet in the closest blessed puddle,and think of wombs and water,
and women with faith and assumptions that get made and don't. With sadness
think of Bob Gibbs and know the part of this roof that will always give
me his memory. With joy, of Jody and Dan and fireworks and fireflies. With
thanks to the maker of the stars and moon and the sun and the sky. And
with thanks, for this roof now over our head.
Joe Ferry
1992
First N.A. publication rights are with "The Other Side" , Phila PA
