Finding Hope

Arms held above my head, I slowly twisted from side to side and looked my body over in the bathroom mirror. I was dappled in bruises - front of my thighs, hip bones, lower ribs, the entire right side of my chest - the list continued. Some places, like my forearms, were both bruised and abraded, skin torn in rosy welts surrounded by the blue-green of a four-day old bruise.

“I’m not sure how much more of this I can take,” I said to Katie, showering in the stall behind me.

“You look like a prize fighter,” she said, “not a therapist.”

I retired from doing therapy a few years ago and started a Ph.D. program so I could be semi-retired at a leisurely job at a community college somewhere. I had no idea how intense and demanding it would actually be. Stress, long hours and sleepless nights led to being utterly exhausted. I spent two years with barely any time with my wife, Katie. No time for companionship and no time to participate in the running of the household. Katie might as well have been single. She was lonely and exhausted too. I knew I couldn’t make it to the end of the Ph.D. and I was worried that our relationship might suffer if I continued to neglect it. So, I dropped out of my Ph.D. program as the pandemic hit, and moved my wife and I to a smaller town on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

London, Kentucky was supposed to be our haven. We would recuperate. We would reconnect. We bought a small home from the 1940s with the intention to slowly upgrade it at a comfortable pace. Some jobs we could do ourselves and some jobs we would likely hire tradesmen. I don’t know what we were thinking. Sane people don’t decide to renovate the home they live in as part of an attempt to rest and recover. The situation got more challenging as the pandemic roared into better focus. Not only were tradesmen harder to book, but we weren’t sure we wanted strangers wandering around our home. Many of the renovations we expected to hire out suddenly fell to us.

We ended up having to buy a second house to live in while we finished the renovation house. Our finances stretched to breaking by owning two homes - maintaining the one and renovating the other.

Dreams, they come and they go. And reality rarely consults with me about my preferences.

“Yeah. I never came home from the office looking like this,” I said, noticing that my floating ribs were particularly painful when I prodded them. “But the attic work has to get done, and we can’t afford to pay someone to do all the work that is needed up there. Either I do it, or we sell the house at a loss and walk away.”

“I don’t think we can do that. A lot of our retirement money is tied up in that house. We’ve got to finish this up, or plan to live in it forever with dangerous wiring and terrible insulation.” She scrubbed vigorously at white primer all over her forearms. Even the sudsy washing of her body barely registered with me, a great indicator just how exhausted I was.

I resisted scratching. Despite wearing work overalls, insulation found sensitive skin in a few places and was slowly driving me crazy. I joined Katie in the shower. Too tired to be interested in any shenanigans and too compassionate to risk transferring any insulation to her tender skin, I waited at one side for my turn in the water.

“It is a lovely little house but it isn’t my forever home. We’ve just got to get done.” I heard the weariness and near desperation in my voice in that final statement. It sounded more like a plea than an expression of determination.

Katie looked up at me concerned. “I’m so sorry you are stuck with that job. I wish I could help.”

“Nah,” I said bravely, “that’s no place for you to be crawling around. You just keep making the rest of the house beautiful, and I’ll try to wrap up the attic as fast as I can.”

She got out of the shower gingerly. I could tell that climbing the ladder and painting the ceilings had taken a toll. She wouldn't be bruised. There wouldn't be the same evidence of her discomfort as was written on my skin, but her shoulders and arms would be a knotted mess in the morning.

“I’m so empty I don’t have the energy to dry off,” she said. She stood unmoving with the towel wrapped around her. She was too hungry to dry off but needed to dry off in order to go get food. We generally had a few snacks around the renovation house, but they were never enough to keep up with the twelve and fourteen hour days.

She looked up at me through a cascade of wet hair. “How much more, do you think?”

“For the attic, or until we're finished?” I tried to gently wash my body. My muscles didn’t want to scrub and my body didn’t want to be touched - they were in agreement that simply standing and soaking was the best idea. Still, the insulation on my skin needed some attention.

“Both, I suppose.” She started drying finally. She’s a trooper. She was probably already figuring out what we could eat before falling into bed. By the time I was out of the shower she would be downstairs putting something together.

“It has to be soon for the attic. I went too slow through Spring. It's starting to get uncomfortably hot up there on sunny days. If I don’t wrap up in the next few weeks I have no idea how I'll stand to be up there.”

She left the bathroom to go get on some comfy clothes. I was lathering shampoo into my hair for the second time when she returned, dressed and combing her hair.

“I figure at least another 3 months if we can maintain this pace. More if we slow down. I’m worried that we are risking injuries if we keep pushing like this though. How are your shoulders after a day of ceilings?

“Yeah, not great. I think I wasn’t being careful with my position though. I must have been looking up too much. My neck is a wreck.”

“Aw baby. Let me go grab your food,” I said. “You can watch a show and I’ll bring you a plate and some medication.” I turned off the water and was standing in the shower stall drying when she opened the glass door and handed me a piece of plastic grocery bag like the ones used for purchases at the big-box stores. It was just a little oval that is usually punched out and left behind during manufacturing, I suppose, but somehow made it to our home. A little flattened oval an inch or so long.

“Ummm… thanks?” I looked at her confused.

“That's ‘Hope,’” she said very factually, her voice indicating a solemn seriousness that didn’t fit the gift at all.

I was naked and still damp, and had in my hand this very sweet but utterly ridiculous scrap of plastic that had now been designated as embodying all our hope. I couldn’t really put Hope down, that didn’t seem to have the right gravitas for this situation. Likewise, I didn’t think I should just crumple Hope up in my hand and keep drying. I decided to put Hope on my shoulder like a little parrot, held in place by the water droplets there, then continued to dry myself. Katie nodded contentedly at my appropriate level of reverence for her gift of Hope and left to go rustle up some food. As I finished drying I noticed Hope still clinging to my shoulder.

Not long after, we were fed and in bed. The lights were off and Katie was cuddled up behind me.

“What is that smell? Chemical? No.” she answered herself. “Why do you smell like eucalyptus?” she finally asked.

“I used one of those skin glues? The kind for sealing cuts? I glued Hope to my shoulder.”

Hope stayed with us the next few day, under work shirts, through renovations and showers and lovemaking. Hope would appear again, momentarily forgotten and therefore freshly unexpected, while we were weary and undressing at the end of another hard day, and we would smile and hug.

We still talk about how we found and nurtured Hope in some very dark days.