I didn’t expect to feel this way. We spent the afternoon nailing...

I didn’t expect to feel this way.

We spent the afternoon nailing cedar shingles to the back of
the house, onto the walls we’d built on this addition we’re reaching the final
stages of. The final outer layer. A basic task. And yet.

It felt like we were tucking the family in. It felt like we
were doing something to keep them warm and safe. It doesn’t usually feel like
this. Usually it feels like work, a task, something to scratch off the
it’s-gotta-get-done list. Not like pulling the covers over loved ones before
sleep.

Was it the act? The blanketing of walls in cedar, piece by
piece? The covering? Adding the final layer between this lovely family and the
wind and the snow and the cold? This lovely family with two young boys, chatty,
charming, smart, and their kind and patient parents with another baby on the
way, a daughter due in March. Another layer between them and the rain and
raccoons? Or is it the family itself, that we’ve more-or-less lived with now
for weeks, days and days spent in their space? A strange sort of intimacy
occurs, and suddenly I find myself feeling protective of them, protecting them.
It’s not felt this way before. The shingles bring me to my grandmother’s house,
the history there, the latch of blood, gone now, her and the house, and (I feel
so reluctant to say it outloud), a longing for just that, for the latch of
blood, enclosed, together, safe.