On Being Blake

This story has a happy ending, and there's a moral at the end. As it unfolded two days ago, I imagined myself sharing it, but I did not imagine the happy ending. Perhaps I would not be telling it if the outcome had been different.
My Aunt’s son-in-law Blake helped her move last week. He not only helped pack, but he borrowed a truck and moved all the appliances, serviced the dryer and washer, hooked up her new TV with her old VCR, and put together a bed frame, a pie safe, and a wooden file cabinet she decided to use as a towel holder in her bathroom.

Aunt Faye made the decision when she turned 80 years old that it was time to move. She had no second thoughts, no doubts when she asked her sister Betty, my mom, to see if there was a unit in the neighborhood that mom moved to seven years ago. When I arrived in Kansas City Aunt Faye had already slept in her new digs, a triplex located directly behind my mom’s.
My cousin Laura picked me up at the airport and on the way home she told me all they had done.

"Would you believe I had planned to make lamb stew, a polenta dish and other ‘Cookling Light’ recipes?" Laura said. "What was I thinking? We’ve had takeout every night...at nine pm!"

After giving my mom a kiss, I said, "Let’s go see your new neighbor!"

Mom, Laura and I simply walked through mom’s place, headed out the back door, and walked across the lawn. Aunt Faye met us at her back door and ushered us through her new surroundings. The weird part was that it was just like mom’s except flipped. It was an exact mirror image, yet there were subtle differences. The sink in the kitchen was closer to the back wall, while the sink in the bathroom was smaller. The bathroom cabinets were smaller but there twice as many. When I walked out into the garage I looked to my right expecting to see the garage door. But there it was on my left. I was turned around, just like Aunt Faye.

"Isn’t the kitchen smaller that your mom’s," Blake asked.

"Isn’t the garage larger?" I said. "And is this the same size as mom’s bedroom?"

We continued making comparisons and estimations while we wondered through the two bedroom living space. Blake was putting the finishing touches on the pie safe that had been turned into the entertainment center. He showed me the new flat screen tv which was hooked up to her vcr. "Now she can watch those old Dean Martin videos that her daughter gave her three Christmases ago."

"And look at this Sue" Aunt Faye called from the bathroom. "Blake put it together today. We found it at Office Max."

"I love it," my mom exclaimed as Faye pointed to a wooden file cabinet perfectly fitting under the bathroom counter, perfectly matching the wood on the cabinets, and filled perfectly with carefully folded towels and perfectly matched wash clothes. "I’d love to have something like that for MY towels."

I picked up on the inflection in her voice. This I could do. As Mom and I made our way back across the small yards, I began to devise a plan to help out my mom with the towel problem. AND I could also buy a cheap DVD and hook it up for her so she could watch movies in closed-captioned.

Two days later, after taking Laura and Blake to the airport, I set off for Office Max and Target to make my purchases. I wouldn’t have to "shop around" because Laura and Faye had already done the leg work. I wouldn’t have to measure, or match, or configure, because Laura and Blake had already done that. They even told me the price I’d have to pay for the DVD..."they’re cheap now, Sue. You can get one for forty bucks."...and the type of wood for the file cabinet...pine, it was a perfect match for the cabinets.

I was tired but in St. Joe the traffic isn’t as bad as Seattle. But it was Saturday. There’s fewer people in St. Joe than in Seattle, but it was Saturday. But I didn’t have to wait too long in the check out lines, and I was back home sooner than I thought. I even had time to wash her car. I was feeling like such a good girl.
"I’m going to take a nap too," I declared. After resting for twenty minutes, I woke up refreshed and ready to take on my two challenges. Electronics first. I opened the DVD player box. I took at all the cables, remote, player, and manuals. I unplugged the TV and VCR and looked for a red, a yellow, and a white hole in the tv to plug in the cables that came with the player. Nothing like that was in back of the TV. I resorted to the manual, but after reading a sentence that was missing a verb and a couple of articles I carefully put down the manual, picked up my cell phone and called my daughter.

"Aly, I know you’re busy right now, but I’m trying to hook up a DVD player for your grandmother and the TV has nothing for me to plug into. I have a yellow cable thingie, and there isn’t anywhere in back of the tv for it to go into. HELP! I know if I remain calm you will be able to solve this problem." I then unhooked the antennae cable wire, unhooked another cable thingie from the VCR and stared at the wires and cables.

"Can I help, honey?" Mom sweetly asked as she walked into a living room strewn with packing materials, flashlight, batteries, an extra remote, and lots of wires.

"Mom, this is more complicated than I thought," I said calmly. "The immediate problem is that I have three plugs now and only one electrical outlet with two connections. "Do you have an extension cord?"

She directed me to the garage where I found two extension cords that probably were manufactured in the fifties. I could see that there was going to be a trip or two to the store. I was trying to avoid places like Radio Shack.

Okay, the DVD wasn’t going to work. Mom probably wouldn’t want that extra remote anyway. I carefully repacked it and replugged in all the wires and cables. There was only a nice snow pattern on the TV screen where "Wheel of Fortune" should have been showing.

"This always has been a little sensitive," said Mom as she tried to move the eighty-five pound cabinet and television. "I just have to move this a little and jiggle this a little and it should come right on."

But it didn’t. I must have damaged a cable, I said. Luckily I could reconnect the wires and get the TV to work, but the VCR now was unusuable. Nice going, Sue.

We had dinner. I tried to have light conversation but I was feeling like a dork. My cell phone rang.

"DORK!" my younger daughter yelled into the phone. "You can connect the DVD to the VCR which is already connected to the TV!" Not anymore it’s not, I thought.

After a few tips from Alyson, I hung up the phone and decided to start on the file cabinet. I carefully pulled out the pieces, stacking each one around me, just as I pictured Blake doing it, methodically, carefully. But as I pulled the front of a drawer out, I stopped. Something was wrong. This wood didn’t match the wood in the bathroom. I hadn’t been able to find "Pine" only "Maple" "Cherry" and "Alder." I had settled on Alder because I assumed it meant "Alder Pine." I actually hadn’t thought that much about it.

After realizing my mistake and calling Office Max, I dragged the forty pound box back into the car and headed back to the store. How in the world did I think I could be Blake. Nothing was turning out. Obviously, I wasn’t a techie and I couldn’t even shop for the right file cabinet. What a dork. But after the nice guys at Office Max (they were geeks but they didn’t make me feel stupid) took my old file cabinet and loaded the car with a pine wood one I felt much better. I was on my way now!

I could have skipped into the house, I was so happy...except that box also weighed forty-pounds...I was feeling a small strain in my back. But I took out my three screw drivers, a mallet, a large hammer and the directions. By this time Mom had decided to go to bed and read. It was 8:45 pm. I put the cabinet together by 10 pm. I decided to fit it under the sink and then work on the drawers. I lifted, pushed, dragged the cabinet over to the bathroom. It looked big. As I shoved it towards the space under the counter, I started shaking my head. NO! It couldn’t be. I hadn’t really measured it that carefully, but I knew the cabinet was about 28" high and that the height of the counter was about 28". Blake fit it perfectly under Aunt Fayes, didn’t he? I shoved, tilted, pushed, swore, and kicked the cabinet but it wouldn’t fit under the counter. I figured it was an eighth of an inch too high. I turned it upside down and took the large hammer and whacked it on the bottom hoping to smash it down. Then I bent down, turned it upside down, and tried shoving it under again. Whoops, careful, there’s that back strain again. This time the cabinet went under a few inches but got stuck on a 2x4 under the counter. I calmly put down the hammer and picked up my cell phone.

"Blake, I know I can’t be you, but I wasn’t really trying to be. HELP! I can’t fit this cabinet under mom’s bathroom counter. I know you could figure out how to solve this problem...HELP!" That was going to be my message that I would leave, but they hadn’t left their answering machine on, so I just hung up the phone.

I didn’t know what to do. It was 10:30 pm, the cabinet was half put together, and I knew it wouldn’t fit under the cabinet. I felt like a little girl again in her mother’s house, a dejected failure. I almost wanted to cry. But I hadn’t done that in a long time. My adult, thankfully, showed up in my psyche and said, "What the hell," and I turned on Saturday Night Live, and finished putting the cabinet together again. When I went to bed the living room was all picked up and the cabinet was set against the wall. I’d deal with it in the morning. I did some back exercises before I went to bed.

I slept well, got up and told mom about the problem. We laughed, and she said, "well, maybe Mike the landlord can help solve the problem."

"Or Deb and Rich," I suggested. That afternoon, we drove to Kansas City and watched the superbowl with my sister and her husband. Rich loaned us two sanders to help shorted the cabinet.. The next day when we got home I sanded the 2x4 and the bottom of the cabinet and it slid right in with a couple of kicks from me.

I then calmly walked over to the DVD box, took it out and plugged it into the VCR which I connected (via coaxial cable) to the tv. It worked beautifully.
I could have embellished this story to make it much more suspenseful, more hilarious, and more exciting. However, I’ve learned that embellishing a story can get you into trouble so I’ll just end with the moral. When things go wrong, clean up your mess, get some rest, laugh a little and try again. I was lucky; things worked out for me on the second time around. They don’t always. As for trying to be Blake...not a chance.