Sunshine was in the shower and I scared the crap outta her by yelling very emphatically “I LOVE THIS FUCKING LAMP!”
I don’t love this lamp. It isn’t even a lamp really, it’s a retro, scrollwork chandelier hybrid thing with dangling sparkly bits. I wouldn’t have picked it. I love my chandeliers dripping crystals, diamond bright and throwing rainbows. But it’s cute and it matches what we’ve got going on in our living room.
I love that it is up and that when we flick the switch it comes on or turns off depending.
I have no words to describe the last 28 days of moving chaos and shit going right sideways.
This fucking chandelier was at the eye of the hurricane, the poster child for everything that was going wrong.
Put it back in the corner, put the tools back in the box and try again tomorrow.
Yesterday was the tomorrow that seemed like it would never come.
Out of the blue my dear friend Cory shows up, says, “looks like you have a light missing.” And voila. There was light and it was good.
Amen hallelujah and all that sparkling jazz.
It sat in various corners and spaces for 28 days. I held it over my head for about an hour all together until my shoulders burned and my forearms shook. Giant got it to light up once, but we needed a part that he had at home and we gave up because we wanted to look at each other and I was making funny little squeaks of protest awfully close to his crotch.
The wiring in this retro apartment we live in is…well fucked. The whole building is eccentric and adorable until it’s time to switch out a light fixture, then it becomes one of the 12 Herculean tasks and there are 5 wires all coated in white paint and no configuration of 3 to 5 makes the light turn on.
“We had to make a lamp that looked like an elephant and when you pulled the trunk the light was supposed to go on. My lamp didn’t go on.”
…
“Without lamps there would be no light.”
Breakfast Club.
Then God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.
All of the mens that tried (4 for the record) balancing on chairs and then a step ladder, twice having sparks fly from the wires, many times having the light just not go on at all and then that one time where the safety wire snapped and it fell and Hot Neighbor caught it whilst balancing on a ladder…all channeled our inner Jane Says and decided to try again tomorrow.
Someone came waltzing out of my ancient history yesterday. And there was light. Well at first there was only light, it wouldn’t turn off…but he fixed it and leveled it and now we have light.
I feel lighter.
I haven’t seen him in 22 years.
He says he can’t read these stories because it gets his blood up. Reading what I go through and not being able to see that I’m okay. I told him I was alright and he believed me and there was more light and it was really good. Literally his face lit up.
It was hard when he left. He reminded me of all the good there was for me in my high school years. I tend to remember the shit, but there was so much good.
Kinda like the damned lamp.
It was nagging at me that it wasn’t up. It’s continued tenancy in the corner behind the door a constant reminder of the things that weren’t done yet. Ghostly marks of droplets of sweat on the living room floor from when Giant tried to get it working reminded me of the coldest night of the year when he fired up the charcoal barbecue to make me steak. He spent the hottest night of the year trying to get this fucking lamp up.
And I still have days where I question whether or not I am loved?
I focus on the bad and fail to see the good right in front of my eyes.
I live in this beautiful apartment with one of my best friends. I call her Sunshine because she lights up my life daily. And I let this lamp vex me?
The lesson here is twofold at least, quite possibly many folded, like an origami crane.
I am loved.
Things get done and get better. Eventually and always.
Not everything can be on my timeline, barely anything really, and the more time I spend worrying and focusing on what is not I miss out on the glory of what is.
