So, we’re doing some painting.

And when I say “we’re doing some painting,” what I mean is that “we have hired somebody who actually knows how to paint” to take our main floor from its original “peanut butter and jam” palette — well intentioned, but ultimately not sustainable — to a much more refined mix of grey and cream.

Going ...

Going ...

Gone.

This is a big step for me, but, really, it’s about time. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are likely well aware of my prowess as a painter of walls. For those of you who have yet to be initiated, a recap:

The person we hired to correct these errors also happens, conveniently, to be our next-door neighbour, Holly. From September to April, she’s a mild-mannered, mature university student, but in the summer she returns to her roots as a painter for a select few clients. Last week, we were lucky to make the cut, I had the pleasure of watching somebody who’s really good at something do that thing. I love watching capable people do capable things, capably. It’s just so soothing.

“I could watch you paint edges all day,” I sighed to Holly as she outlined — without tape! — the edge of a grey wall, nary a spot of colour marring the cream ceiling. And then I worried that maybe she thought I was creepy, and I tiptoed back to my office to do my job. Because I do my job well and I’m learning to let other people — like, say, painters, or roofers — do theirs.

It was also great to have Holly around because it meant that we could compare notes about kids. She’s the mother of a sweet 14-year-old boy, and Rachel and I like to look to her as a bellwether of things ahead, while she likes to reminisce about life with little ones. Initially, she was hesitant to take the job because she wanted to spend the last couple of weeks before school started again with her son — but then she realized that she would be able to get plenty of painting done in the mornings before he woke up at noon or so. “He’s going to have to get up for school at 6:30 in the morning,” she kept fretting. “I don’t know how he’s going to do it.” “He’ll do it,” I said. “It’ll be just fine.” But in my mind I knew that when my own teenage sons sleep until noon I will fret about it all the same.

Holly, alas, cannot paint our radiators for us, and so that job falls to me — the other option being to pay $1,000 to have an auto-body shop sandblast and paint them. “Really?” I asked the lady at the auto-body shop on the phone. “A thousand dollars?”

“Yes, dear,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a radiator or a Lamborghini — it’s still a paint job.”

Truthfully, I’m kind of excited to paint the radiators, mostly because it means that I get to use a power washer, which just seems like the most satisfying tool one could wield. My other astonishingly capable neighbour (we’re surrounded), Greg, of my self-styled vast tool lending library and infinite patience, has set me up with his washer, and now I am going to go blast several decades worth of dust from the cast-iron beasts before going at them with some spray paint. I doubt they’ll look like Lamborghinis when I’m done with them, but I hope that they’ll be presentable. Wish me luck.

Here is Rowan’s artistic interpretation of his recent camping trip:

In the middle, you will observe a tent with three smiling stick figures inside: the two little ones are Rowan and Isaac, and the bigger one, natch, is Rachel. Off to the right, in his own little tent, is Rob-the-donor. If you look closely, you can just make out what he’s thinking:

At the top is the requisite kindergarten-grade sun. To the right is Lake Superior, clear and warm, shallow for miles in under the August sky.

But, you’re thinking to yourself, someone is missing. Susan, where are you?

Guess.

Maybe you have been eaten by a bear? Perhaps you are visiting the Portapotty? Trying to patch the slow leak in the air mattress?

No, no, and no.

Oh.

Maybe, then, you are soaking commando in a hot tub underneath the stars before taking yourself off for ice cream and to see a late showing of The Kids Are All Right — which did, after all, come to Thunder Bay! Later, maybe you slept in, and then woke up to do yoga before settling in for a morning of quietly reading the manuscript of your novel-in-progress. After which, maybe you went for a long walk, picked some raspberries, returned home to finish your readthrough, and then went out for a long-overdue dinner with a friend. Maybe you ate slow-cooked ribs and gumbo and jambalaya. Maybe you read your girl friend’s copy of the third Stieg Larsson novel in bed and then slept, uninterrupted by partiers in the next campground over or a shrieking baby in the next tent or your own three-year-old son, who never quite settled and hopped from Thermarest to Thermarest every two hours through the night. Maybe you woke up to do more yoga and plot out the events of your novel on a spreadsheet before making gazpacho and pasta with tomatoes, cucumbers, chard, and parsley from your very own garden, ready for your sunsoaked family when they returned after their 48 hours away from you. Maybe you all watched The Empire Strikes Back together when they got home.

Bingo.

Maybe you missed them.

Maybe.

And that photo wasn’t even staged — can you believe it? Just a random assortment of things that made it onto our kitchen counter a few evenings ago, including the requisite stainless steel water bottles, one of the rocks the kids wanted to watch change colour under the water from the kitchen tap, some bangles, and Isaac’s penny tree — those copper disks are pennies flattened underneath real trains on real train tracks. And that Mrs. Potato Head is a real Mrs. Potato Head made from real plastic. So authentic we are.

The babysitter is on a much-deserved holiday, and that means Rachel and I are going to halfsies on child care this week. Right now, until, oh, precisely 12:30 today, it’s my half. Not that I’m counting. I will be cramming a week’s worth of work into the other half, in addition to the moments I have stolen while some DVDs are watched by some children or while Isaac naps. Oh, yes, we’ve reinstated the nap, for obvious reasons. Yesterday afternoon he slept for three glorious hours, woke up happy as a Teletubby, and went to bed at a quarter to ten. But that’s okay, because I got a shitload of work done while he slept. The day before, I managed to conduct a telephone interview while Isaac slept and Rowan watched Wall-E. It sort of worked, except for when I had to put the very nice lady I was speaking to on hold, twice, once to unstick the DVD from its FBI warnings against copyright infringement, the second to put butter on Melba toast.

But it’s not all work and pawning the children off on sleep and Pixar: I’ve been swimming, playing dreidel, teaching Rowan how to play Rummy-Q (yes!), playing chase in the backyard, reading Roald Dahl books. In the evenings, we fill two big green tubs — the kind normal people would put ice and beer in at parties — with warm water and bubbles, and the kids have “bucket baths” on the deck. Last night, after they were asleep, I snuck out and picked up hot fudge sundaes at Merla Mae, our local softserve, and Rachel and I ate them on the deck and watched the sunset.

Sadly, I can’t seem to find the time to write about the kids in much detail when I am actually spending time with them. This is a mixed gift, of course, and my project is to focus on the gift part of that mix, at least until 12:30 today. In the meantime, this is what you get: a random assortment of things that for now will have to suffice as a real composition.

In the late 1970s, my mother bought herself a dress made out of — you know it — Ultrasuede. It was fantastic. Not because of the styling, which I vaguely remember as light tan in colour, perforated with a pattern of tiny holes. Because of the way it felt. Sometimes I snuck into her closet just to touch that dress, to run my fingers back and forth across the nap of the fabric, which was softer than anything else I knew. She wore it to synagogue services one year, and spent the better part of three hours in a silent, futile battle with me, trying to get me to stop stroking her sleeve.

She called it “nudging,” (pronounced noodje, like book) a Yiddish term that translates to “pestering” or “badgering” or “annoying” — as in, “Mom, can we have ice cream? Can we? Can we? Can we have ice cream? Can we have some now? Ice cream? Can we? Have some? From the freezer? Now? Ice cream?”

Or, “Have you emptied the dishwasher?”

But nudging to me is always physical, not verbal, a form of silent intimacy that falls somewhere on the continuum between bliss and torture. My six-year-old compulsion to touch my mother’s softsoftsoft sleeve. A small foot pushing against my thigh underneath the dining room table. Isaac stroking my hair: “Nice! Nice!” The way Rowan does up and undoes the buttons on my cardigan as he talks to me, or picks the lint off my sweater. A baby asleep on your chest, clutching your T-shirt in his tiny fist. Isaac’s thumb in his mouth, his fingers working the satin and fuzzy fabrics of his blankie. The way a cat pushes her head underneath your hand, the way a child creates a lap by falling into it, the way a bedmate turns her back to you for spooning, ready or not.

There are the large intimacies of parenting, those surrounding conception and pregnancy, birthing and nursing and feeding and cleaning and such. There are the children sticking their fingers into your yogurt and then into your nose. But, I think sometimes, that families are made just as much by the tiny intimacies, the nudges that only they can — just barely — get away with.