I laid in the living room thinking about the dream. Thinking about that weekend morning that I left my mother alone. And feeling guilt for both. I had to stay. I didn’t really know if he was going to die that night. His death was on everyone’s minds. It was only natural for me to dream about it. People recant stories of prophetic dreams all the time, and I’ve  oohed and aahed at the telling of them, but did I ever really believe they were legitimate signs? Or did I chalk them up to coincidence? I felt different when I woke that morning. Somehow that dream was different than any I’d had before. It was crisp. No fuzzy edges. No hidden meanings, or unrealistic twists. Simply a clear story from beginning to end. His end. And I remembered it. I don’t remember it now, but I remembered it then. And that alone was unusual.

My oldest brother interrupted my thoughts. My father needed to be changed and it was going to take three of us to do it.

At first I envied her. I longed for the ability to remember without angst. I wanted to be able to tell stories of my past without reliving the pain. I wanted the ability to recite my experiences with a smooth brow and an even heartbeat.

The bathroom looks fantastic. Like it’s been part of the family since the beginning. No trace of the bad ‘70s redo. No fiberglass tub, no chipboard vanity, no fake marble countertop, and no white tile stained beyond cleaning by any of today’s modern miracle industrial products. And even though the new fixtures are a mix of traditional and contemporary, and all the materials are brand spanking new, the result is a deceivingly original looking w.c..

She’s embraced it with all the appreciation I’d hoped for.

These days I spend most of my time in the living room. Occasionally watching some program recorded on the dvr from the previous week. Usually playing video games to help escape from reality. And sometimes just sitting, and staring , and smoking, and thinking about all the things happening around me – good and bad – and what my role is in each.

I’m alone. Again. After almost a year and a half of a turbulent, painful, less than rewarding relationship, I finally mustered the courage to end it and face the world on my own once more. He was a good man. He still is. But he’s lived a life fraught with pitfalls and uncertainty and developed ways to cope that most people find frightening in themselves. His past both intrigued and repelled me. There was an edge to him, a sense of danger. He’d been a bad boy for a long time. But I saw flashes of the shy, slightly insecure, almost meek man inside and I thought he was ready to leave the bay boy behind. He said he was ready to leave him behind. But all of that is relative, isn’t it? Our perspectives were different. Vastly different. It makes sense that they would be, after all, we’d led very different lives. It never occurred to me the skin I thought should be shed and left behind, might continue to seem necessary to him.

For a long time I convinced myself that circumstances created the tension between us. But the situation was a distraction, not the cause. It allowed me to push back the inevitable. It allowed me to deal with situations from which other people would run. Fast. Screaming. But not too long ago I realized, that while he was telling me that at the core of things he was happy. That through all the secrets and shouting and empty threats, when it came down to it, he was happy. His life was safer, and more secure than it had ever been before. He had everything he needed, and almost all that he wanted. He was just trying to figure a way to reintroduce aspects of his past life that he knew would make me uncomfortable.

I was not happy. I hadn’t really ever been happy with our relationship. From the beginning it wasn’t what I’d hoped, but thought over time we’d find our level. We’d create something that worked for both of us. It never happened. Granted my vision for a perfect life included a white picket fence and a fresh batch of cookies. I saw myself as June Cleaver sans the beav. It’s a hard image to live up to, especially since Barbara Billingsley didn’t have my heavy beard, but how could striving for that kind of television dream be bad?

He wanted more grit. He was used to that. He’d lived that way for most of his life. I found it disturbing. It crept into places it didn’t belong. Like sand in your bathing suit. And that surprise you feel when you’re still washing the beach out of unmentionable places two days after the vacation ended. I’m not a beach person. I never have been.

So now I sit in the living room and look at all that surrounds me, and feel relief that I still have what resembles a life. Weak and wounded at the moment, but at the heart of it still beating. And the house has closed in a little. Almost embracing me. Comforting me. With an understanding that time will bring more change and we will both still be here. Together.

Leaving me alone in a room for too long is a dangerous thing. Too much time to myself, and I analyze, re-analyze, and over analyze everything going on in my life. This “me time” was devoted to picking apart what may or may not be my new relationship.

What is it that makes us who we are?

Instead of talking over me. Consoling herself with tales from the past. Blathering on for the sake of hearing her own voice. She was doing just the opposite. It took me a while to understand that all the sad stories were meant as a guide. A kind of users manual with the troubleshooting section right up front.

In order to realize my vision I needed to lay the foundation. The only way for my renovations to be successful was to layer them onto a solid structure. The house was simply making sure I did things the right way.

This time it was not just for a couple hours. This time it was long-term. There was no smiling, saying thank you for a nice evening, and parting ways. Now I had to find a way to make it work. Somehow I needed to worm my way into a dialogue instead of gesturing to passers-by and trying to will the check to come.

Aggressive attempts to force my agenda were leading nowhere. Pushing my desires for a more well-designed space couldn’t circumvent the house’s needs. My frustration was getting the better of me. And the thought crossed my mind — more than once — that maybe I should give up altogether. Surrender. Throw in the towel.

For some time I’d tried to break in. I had the silly idea that if I interjected something about myself, my life, my experiences, I could turn this monologue into a decent conversation. But every time I opened my mouth, he would pass the salt, or pour me more wine, or shove a mouthful of food in my direction, so I could taste how delicious his selection was. I think he truly believed he was anticipating the requests I was about to make. After all, what other reason would I have for trying to interrupt?

The waitress never managed it either. She and I developed a kind of sign language. It became like a game. Every few minutes, while making her rounds, she would pass behind him and glance in my direction, giving me the opportunity to make non-verbal pleas. We developed a code of facial expressions and ingenious little hand gestures. Some signals were obvious, like “More water please,” or “We’re out of bread.” Others were more complicated. For example, “My steak is a little rare” took a couple tries. But we managed to do surprisingly well, she and I. The only request I never succeeded in making her understand was a rather elaborate, yet subtle, combination of movements meant to implore her to “Please take this bleu cheese covered fork and jam it into my left eye, because slowly bleeding to death over my baby greens would be a pleasure compared to this.” I’m sure she got it later. Probably at the end of the night when she was sitting at the bar filling salt shakers for the next day’s lunch crowd.

My relationship with this house was a little like that date. From day one she’d been telling stories. Some of obvious neglect. Others of quiet experience. But the stream was constant.

I know what you’re thinking … how is that different from any other date I’ve had in the last year. But it is. I don’t have to pretend to like the plumber.

The hard, cold thing in the middle of the bath mat turned out to be a mirror. A small round thing with suction cups on the back for sticking it to the shower wall so I can shave before stepping out of the steam. It had landed a full three feet from where it was stuck to the tile behind the tub.

I’m not a superstitious man. But there are certain things no one should mess with. One of those is never start a piece of pie at the pointy end. And another is don’t mess with ghosts.

Stop laughing and listen to me!

Everyone leaves a little of themselves when they leave a place. The longer you’ve been there, the more of you you leave. Live in a house for most of your life and the stain you leave can be indelible.

My sister had bleached the fridge and made my bed. I’d hunted down the toilet paper and burrowed to the bottom of several boxes to find a clean bath towel. I was as prepared for the night as I could be. Pizza was in order. And a milkshake. If I wasn’t going to find comfort in the sea of corrugated cubes, I’d try to unearth it under pepperoni and double cheese.

Halfway into my third slice it occurred to me I was missing something. The night was quiet, the lights were dimmed, and there was enough food for two. Only one thing would have made that night a little less lonely and a little more bearable … CABLE!

I’d abstained for months. I had Comcast put a hold on my account for the summer so I could concentrate on the house, and all that it involved, without distraction. Now that the big push was over, now that the nuts and bolts were in place and it was time to turn to making that house a home, I needed a little noise. I wanted to establish new routines — like apple pie on Sundays with Desperate Housewives, or eating crackers in bed during Big Love. I wanted a way to invite the outside world in … in small doses … when it suited me … in high definition.

I’d call the following morning. Until then it was just me. I thought.

Exhausted and sated I headed to bed. On the way I veered into the bathroom to turn on a light in case I had to find my way there in a blurry haze during the wee hours. I turned the dimmer almost all the way down. I only needed enough illumination to help avoid obstacles, not guide ships past the rocky shoals. I hardly had my socks off before the snoring began.

Just past 2am the urge hit me, and I stumbled out of bed, pointing myself in the general direction of the loo. With every step my eyes ached a little more, and I realized when my hand hit the door jam, that the fixture I’d been so careful to dim was now brighter than the noonday sun. The sky was spitting shards and a wind wailed wildly as it scraped the rafters under the eaves. The storm, I thought, must have caused a surge that sent the bathroom super nova. Strange that an entirely new electrical system would be affected that way. I turned the dial down again, did my business, and pushed the button on the way out — extinguishing it completely.

At 4 I woke again. It’s not unusual for me to open my eyes several times during the night. I usually roll over and fall right back to sleep. But last night I had to pee again. That was not only unusual, it was annoying. My frustration was distracting, and it wasn’t until I’d turned off the overhead and was headed back to the bedroom that I realized the bathroom light had been on when I walked in.

I’m not sure any electrical surge could do that. Making dimmed lights brighter was one thing, but flipping switches was a whole different ball of wax. I tensed just enough to let the twinge of fear crawling up my spine drop off onto the hardwood, and slid back into the fleece covered bed — drifting off again in seconds.

Two hours later I woke to a crash. Not so much a crash, as a dull thud. Something, or someone, had hit the floor. In a maze of bulging cardboard boxes stacked halfway to the ceiling, it didn’t surprise me that something had slid off it’s pile. But all the same, I thought I should investigate. Hell, I wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, so what did it matter?

I wandered from room to room taking inventory of mountains and mole hills — all corrugated. Nothing seemed out of place. Any more than 300 cubes wedged into a cottage the size of a two-seater shithouse would. My last stop, the urination station … again. I can’t remember taking in enough fluid in the past week to warrant pissing that much, but for some reason the bathroom kept calling me back.

My heart was racing. My palms were sweating. And an almost unbearable stitch threatened to crawl up my left side and squeeze the life out of me. But I knew I wouldn’t die, because that would have been too easy. I was destined to live. To experience the agony full force. And it was my job, I reasoned, to crawl out of that hole and fill it in, so I’d never fall back there again.

I’m not sure if what I felt was panic, attacking me in my weakened state, or just your garden variety cardiac arrest, but it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and I have a pretty high threshold for pain.

I usually perform pretty well under pressure. My professional life is ruled by deadlines — some reasonable, but more often than not, remarkably unrealistic. Every day I present my work to clients, only to be scrutinized, criticized, and otherwise trivialized. Even the colorblind believe they can do my job better. But that comes with the territory, and I weather it well. If a client wants her brochure to be the baby puke green of the sweater she wore last Thursday … I can do that. I won’t put my name on it, but I can do that. You learn to roll with the punches and never let any single job get the better of you.

The trouble comes when you combine the constant complaining of one client with the kvetching of the other twelve you’re trying to please. Add to that packing up your past, draining your bank account to pay for the future, closing your eyes to possible disaster, and dodging the building inspector until you can be sure your project will pass muster — the second time around — and even the most stalwart soul would stumble. Thinking about it right now just made me vomit a little in my mouth.

So as I stared at the hole in the center of the ceiling, where brand new electrical wire clutched a plain porcelain socket cradling a bare bulb, trying to will the pain in my side to shrink, I went through the series of unfortunate events that brought me here. I listed all the things that had gone wrong that week to find where I’d made bad turns. Retraced my steps to see if there was any way to go back and undo what I had done. Or at least learn from my mistakes.

1. I should never have referred to her sweater as baby puke green … to her face. Lesson learned.

2. Colorblind people can be very sensitive about that fact.

3. Pastrami gives me heartburn like nobody’s business. And eating it anyway belies a kind of self-loathing that, quite frankly, can’t be dealt with here. So let’s move on.

4. Potential disaster only means you need to change course. Rethink your decisions and adjust. Rotten floorboards under the toilet could mean an entire bathroom renovation. But it could also mean a very tastefully done repair to be revisited when budget allows. (Read: quick and dirty patch job whether you like it or not).

5. Building inspectors are people too. Really mean and petty, but people all the same.

6. If all house projects don’t get done before I move in next weekend, I will not be eternally exiled to purgatory. My contractor will.

7. Packing is just throwing shit into boxes. Those boxes only have to survive a four block trek. And if, for some unfathomable reason, things go awry, it is only shit after all.

While the list seems pretty straightforward now, it took almost two hours to go through in my head. All the while digging my right hand into my ribs, massaging the pain on my left. With each consecutive number the pain diminished. And by the time I admitted to myself that my shit really was just shit, the pain was gone.