The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir by Williams Dee

Author:Williams, Dee [Williams, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Blondie on the Roof

I spent all of June and half of July mostly working alone, never taking a weekend off, jumping out of my car the minute I got home from work during the week. Over time, my little house and the “blondie on the roof,” as one passerby described me, became something of a neighborhood spectacle. One day, a complete stranger stopped as he was driving by because he saw me carrying one of the skylight windows up to the roof. He parked his car, threw an extra ladder up next to me, and started working, explaining that he was on his way to see his mom, who lived in the retirement home down the street. “She’d give me an earful if I told her I saw you crawling up a ladder in flip-flops and I did nothing to save you from killing yourself.” It was a comment that could have seemed condescending, but this kind man was serious, and he was helpful.

I’ve never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself, feels liberating. I started to believe that the universe was conspiring to help me finish my house, sending people along at the right moment. I never learned that man’s name, but I was certain he happened along at a time that saved my life or the life of the skylight that now sits over the great room. Either way . . . he did his mother right. Halfway up the ladder, my defibrillator had started firing, causing me to suddenly lean my head into the window glass and clutch the entire unit with the ladder in a bear hug. I was frozen, waiting for the storm to pass, and when I saw that second ladder slam against the roof next to me, I knew that whatever happened next, it was going to be all right. I was safe.

Sometimes the word gratitude feels too thin to explain things, and I started to cry, then almost immediately giggle like a ten-year-old, when we finally got the window in place.

Another time, a traveling salesman (a twenty-year-old college student selling magazine subscriptions off his bike) rode over and collapsed his wares on the nearby lawn. We chitchatted, with me on the roof and him lying back on the grass, sipping water; we discussed the little house, how it was built, and what I planned to do with it. “Are you gonna live in it?” he asked, leaning up on his elbows. I stopped what I was doing and pulled my sunglasses up on my head, looking across the street at my big beautiful house. The chocolate mint was blooming near the lavender, and the small apple tree in the front yard was positively beaming with its first baby fruit—a green apple the size of a chicken egg. The fir tree was shadowing the left side

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