I lay down a stroke of whitish paint—Swiss Coffee—over the dark teal wainscoting in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, and a wave of nausea washes over me.
It’s not the fumes.
The color choice comes at the directive of our Realtor, part of the process of preparing the home for sale after my in-laws passed. Only now, it’s no longer a home—just a house. I’m helping erase the memories, the personal imprint of a family, stripping it down to a blank canvas so another family can imagine their own lives here.
It feels like painting over the Mona Lisa, preparing the space for a new masterpiece. Because that’s what we do—each of us creates a masterpiece in our own way, and our living spaces reflect us just as much as the books we read, the clothes we wear, and the way we see the world.
Next, I pry off the baseboard in the back bedroom.
There it is—a painter’s palette of browns, blues, tans, whites, and grays, layered like the rings of a tree. Each color a mark of time. Each layer a chapter.