-Frames

After weeks of watching the roof leak

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board.

-Gary Snyder

Since I spread the rolls of insulation up in the attic just after moving in, I've known the sub-standard quality of the materials used in constructing the roof of this house. Armed with breathing protection, a miner's head-lamp and cumbersome rubber gloves, I spent hours pulling, pushing, coaxing the long pink strips into place between ceiling rafters. Each time I removed the gloves for a break, sweat dripped from the sleeves. The cone of the breather gathered brown dust over the nostrils and mouth.

Long 2"x 4" boards bowed under the pressure of heat and years. I felt the curves of them while taking brief breaks. I knew that at some point in our stay, there would be work needing completion up there. My back panged and sang as I clambered around on the rafters, shifting the small plywood platform that I knelt on to work. Even at the peak, only a child could be upright in the space, so I'd just sit to break as I eyed the long curves where only straight should have been.

That was all done after we first moved in, and except for some brief visits to place mounts for ceiling fans, I'd not spent much time up in there. Beyond the confinement of the place, there was the fear it inspired. Between us and the world, just this small strip of wood, tar and paper. At each rain fall, I envisioned first a small spot of wet in the plywood, then the drip into boxes of magazines or clothes and the spreading brown stains in the ceilings above our bed and heads, all the slow-motion horror of decay.

Then my back was failing, in what felt like fast-forward, and home improvements became less important. Some money came of my decay between operations four and five and my mind fixed again on the way of things, the crumbling and degeneration. Sticks and bones break on their own and minds go crumbling after. We found a contractor to replace the roof, and a radiologist to inject my spine. It felt like progress and not just fingers in the dike.

In the midst of removing the old materials, the contractor discovered many problems in the structure: the framing was weak and inadequate, the plywood was brittle, destroyed by the heat--all of it needed replacement. So it began and progressed, from pallets of plywood dumped in the yard, to the cigarette butts of workers curled in the sand of the driveway. In the midst of it all, with us out of the house, one foot came through the bedroom ceiling, and bits of trim came to rest all over the yard.

All of it is fixed now--new shingles and plywood on 2" x 6", and more titanium screwed into the bits of bone in the middle of me. The cigarette butts are still out there, and some nails strewn about. Apparently, the magnetic scan of our yard promised in the contract was either neglected or ineffective. For me, there is a cane for walking, a brace for support and the place where they cut patched with strips of tape. It is still a bit bloody and bruised. I discovered after my other fusion that the titanium does not set off metal-detectors. It is, perhaps, not even magnetic. I read yesterday that some people return fully to normal activities after fusion, to Olympic competition, even. I want it to rain now. The ground is so awfully dry, just awaiting the sink-holes and forest fires.