What Lies Beneath

The crew that is re-siding our house arrived early Monday morning and quickly began tearing off the old, yellow stuff. I've been more than eager for this. We bought the house five years ago, and have been nailing back pieces in various places around the house that have sprung. I'm sure the neighbors were pumping their fists at the sight of the Burnett Siding truck that pulled into our circle drive. The workers assured us this would be a two-week job, tops, assuming there were no complications. No complications. In my naive moments, of which there have been many over the past 45 years, I believed that complications were the exception instead of the rule. I was jolted out of my joyful existence every time life got disorderly.

I should not have been surprised when the doorbell rang and the crew leader said the words: "We've got a big problem." I stepped outside with him and looked at the front of our house. The siding was off, revealing wood that had rotted away to whatever construction material was underneath - something pink and aluminum with labels stamped across it. Buckets of water, as he put it, had poured forth from beneath the cheap siding, trapped for who knows how long. Something or other had not been sealed, and for years the rain that would beat the front of our house was becoming a part of it and eating away at the wood beneath. It was hideous, resembling something that would be featured on a home and garden network episode of nightmare remodels. All this time, I thought everything about our house was intact, except for a few pieces of stray siding here and there. I thought what could be seen represented everything that lay beneath. But like life, it was much more complicated than that. What was underneath was waiting to be revealed, seen, gaped at, puzzled over. We asked ourselves how our seemingly well-constructed house could be so complex under its surface.

The crew patched, and then put up the new, crisp, white siding that has transformed our house into something even better than before. I was proud of myself for taking this complication in stride. I didn't panic or stomp around or grumble about the unfairness of life. It was just rotten wood, after all.