Even before we got engaged,—but especially, afterwards—I told him I wanted to help redecorate his house, to take it from being “yours,” as I said, to “ours.” And I meant it, no lie, but deep down in my little heart, a small part of me was using the plural possessive of the second person pronoun—not the singular—to describe his current living situation.
What the huh?
Sorry, let me back up. I’m marrying a divorced man and planning on moving into the house where he lives alone now, but which he used to share with his ex-wife. Is that clear enough?
I love him and he loves me, and together we’re starting new chapters of our lives with each other—but it’s a new chapter written, if you will, in a previously used journal. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of the thousand times a day that I think about it, it doesn’t bother me. But that one time it does—well, let’s just say that my desire to redo his guest bathroom was ninety-nine percent about the colors and the carpet (I know, carpet! In a bathroom!) and one teeny-tiny percent about not wanting to read the previously written pages.
I picked out paint chips for the walls and gave him several options, was delighted when we agreed on a shade, and had moaned so loudly and often about ripping out the carpet that, by the time we actually did, we’d already picked out the replacement tile. Together we taped and primed the walls, covering up the old in preparation for the new. Together we painted—he on the high spots and me along the low ones, him with broad strokes and me focusing on edging. Together, we (okay, mostly he) ripped up dusty old carpet and moldering tacking, carefully measuring the room to lay down the tile in a pattern we decided on as a couple. He laid a row, then I did, and we shared the onerous task of cutting around the vents and the toilet and fitting the tile against the walls—long, detail-oriented work that played to our strengths and highlighted our ability to work together.
Honestly, if traveling together in a foreign country for a week without a problem wasn’t reason enough to marry this man, the argument-free hours we spent together in that small space sealed the deal.
Ultimately, it was our room—a project that we completed together—and a small part of his old house that was new and “ours.” And when it was done and the paint dry, I rehung the shower curtain his ex-wife had bought with the hooks that had inspired our color choices, and it tied the room together.
His past, like the paint underneath the fresh new coat, isn’t gone and forgotten. It’s a part of him and always will be, and we draw on the best of what came before to make a bright new space for both of us, for the future.
Photo of the new bathroom, courtesy of the author
