On Tuesday I decided that I would make one last big move on the house and then call it really seriously finally done (for now). When we bought this house, the attic was just a cavernous space of an easy standing height, crossed with support beams, and occupied only birds’ nests. We wanted up there! We dropped the ceiling in the kitchen and hall to get one lovely room and a bathroom, a haven for guests. But over the rest of the house, the ceilings on the ground floor are high which makes the space above smaller. The other half of the attic has been an unfinished space—with reinforced floor and the beginnings of dry wall and one small window. On Tuesday, I decided we’d just make that one last change and then we’d be done.
So I called Dave, the Builder Extraordinaire. How much will it cost to put one skylight in that room and plaster it up? I asked. And when can you do it? Dave gave me a figure that was less than the cash I had on hand from my work in
And so it was, on Wednesday, that I was looking at my attic walls and pointing to the place where I wanted the skylight. I was on an international phone call and so I had very little time to get the placement right. I wanted it far forward so that this skylight wouldn’t interfere with what we wanted to do to the room later. And I wanted it low enough to give me a view. Thursday night, I looked. The skylight seemed to be in the right place forward, I thought. But it was so high. I’d never get a view from there. I agonized, discussed things with Rob and Michael, and wished for the view.
Thursday morning I laid out my problem to Dave. How much work would it be to drop the skylight another 2 feet so I could see out of it? “No worries, Jen,” Dave told me (I think Dave is the only person I have met in the last 15 years who calls me Jen). He dropped the hole and I stood in the opening, delighted with my imagination of the view I’d see once the roof was cut open.
On Friday, I got to experience that. Shaking of house, rattling of windows and suddenly sunlight streaming into an attic that had never seen the day before. And, through the hole in the roof, broad views of blue sea wav
es lapping onto green hills. Perfection. God how I love perfection. I had exactly what I wanted.
Have you ever noticed how short lived perfection really is? And so it was, when the skylight was moved into place, when it was perching, not in the hole as I had imagined, but on top of the hole to be flashed above the roofline, that I once again remembered how little perfection there is in the world. The depth of the roof plus the depth of the skylight raised the viewline up 8 inches. The only eight inches of my sea view. Now, from my eye level, I look straight into the edge of the skylight and can raise my eyes to see the tips of the hills bumping into the sky. To make things worse, now the window is too low to add head height to the room, and maybe, just maybe, it’s a little too far forward.
I am in agony over the 8 inches wrong here, the 12 inches wrong there. I brooded around the house yesterday, feeling stupid for having made Dave move the hole once and wondering whether I should have had him move it again when I saw that it wasn’t what I wanted. This bed is too hard, this one is too soft. How many beds to you try before you find one that’s just right?
I try very hard to remember that perfection is the enemy of the good, a lesson that doesn’t come easily to me. But, ah, the responsibility of choosing where to put a window in a windowless wall. Suddenly, the world seemed full of responsibilities that I wasn’t up to meeting. How do you pick the perfect high school for Naomi? What shall we serve our dinner guests, controlling for multiple allergies? How do we know which country is the best one for us to live in? What colour should we paint the walls that surround the too-low and too-forward skylight?
And it’s also totally absurd. I have a good friend who is trying to come to terms with his dying father. I have other friends trying to figure out their loves and make relationship choices for their futures. I talk with teachers who are trying to figure out what on earth to teach for the new curriculum. We are gifted and plagued by our ability to measure and weigh, to agonize over decisions and to hold future—and backwards—images. We decide which things are too high, too low, too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft. This is life, though, where we cannot get it exactly right each time. There are roof pitches to take into consideration (oops), unexpected storm clouds, whether she loves you back, the effects of the new leadership on morale. There are unexpected detours and a confusion of competing commitments.
I spend big swaths of my day looking at the sea, watching its relentless rhythm. I watch the clouds get pushed around by the wind, the green hills go yellow without rain. I should be getting natural patterns, should 
be understanding that this life I lead is small and the choices I make (do I go to the
When Keith came over yesterday, having heard something of my discomfort about the window, he leapt up into the attic room and smiled broadly. “What do you mean no view?” he asked, looking out. “This is perfect!” I pointed out that it was perfect for some and useless for others and he looked at me confused. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I stooped him down until his eyes were level with mine, looking straight ahead at the edge of the skylight and into a sea-less hills and sky beyond. He burst into laughter. “The window isn’t too high—you’re too low!” he said. “Or we should raise the floor!” He pulled over a paint can for me to stand on, and there was my beloved view, swath of sea ruffling into hills. There isn’t an objective too high or too low or too hot or too cold, there’s just Goldilocks and the particular mood she’s in and the fact that she’s closer in size to baby bear than to Mama or Papa. There is only what is, a window there, a skylight there, the waves forming white crests in a silver sea.
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