October 29, 2023 by Amy
Out of the Shadows, Finally
When I was in grade school and middle school, I collected cats. Not the real ones, mind you, although I’d have been thrilled to collect those, too, had my parents allowed it. Cat figurines were my jam. I had dozens and dozens of them. So my dad, being the handy guy that he was, built me a shadowbox. It was all the rage in home decor at that time for people to use old letterpress printer’s drawers, those wooden racks that held the pieces of metal type printers would carefully arrange in a tray for the press to ink and print newspapers and flyers and bulletins. They were expensive, if I remember correctly, and somewhat hard to find due to being all the rage. Plus the slots were tiny and some of my cats weren’t.
So Daddy got busy in his workshop and made me a shadowbox out of scrap wood he had lying around. He didn’t tell anyone he was doing this, just designed and built the thing, and then carefully stained it, before hanging it in my room to hold my cat collection. I arranged all my cats in the various boxes and there it hung for years. I loved it. It went with me to my first apartment in college, where the cats were mostly replaced with any number of things suitable for a college girl. Dad added a small nail right in the center, at the top, where I hung my graduation tassel.
After college, I moved back home and brought the box with me, although it wasn’t hung in my parents’ new house. Nothing was hung in my room there, for I came home engaged to be married and moving back was simply a layover until the wedding and moving into my own home with my new husband. The shadowbox came into the marriage with me. It still wasn’t hung, but was carefully stored for “someday.”
Four years later, we moved into a different home, one with a space perfect for the shadowbox. By that point, I was over the richly-stained wood and decided I’d paint it the same deep purple I had painted the crown molding, which matched the new chairs and ottomans we bought for the space. It was a pain in the ass to paint, and I did a shitty job. The shadowbox still wasn’t hung.
Then we wrecked that house, and the box moved with us (and all our other belongings) to our temporary home while we rebuilt, and then it moved back. It sat behind the door in my office, half-assedly painted and begging for refinishing. Most of the time I forgot it was there. Last year, I decided to tackle this project once again. The deep purple wouldn’t work on the chocolate brown walls of my home office, though, so I went in search of yet another color. Which would, of course, have to be light so as to stand out against the chocolate, and which would make repainting it another pain in the ass as now I’d have to do multiple coats to cover the dark purple. I hitched a ride to the hardware store with my husband, who seems to find an excuse to visit the hardware store most weekends, and agonized over paint samples. You’d think I was tackling the Sistine Chapel. Because I am who I am, the name of the color is almost as important as the color itself, and so I was thrilled to finally land on Dutch Boy’s “Worn Pages,” a lovely warm white and a nod to books and writing.
I bought the smallest-possible size container of the paint and a new brush, and headed home. I spread newspapers over the floor of my office and found cardboard boxes to prop up the shadowbox. Which is when I learned, again, that it is a giant pain in the ass to paint something so intricate. And I’d have to do it at least twice to cover up that purple. I painted and painted and got impatient and painted some more. And then it all dried and it looked like shit because I had slathered Worn Pages too thick in places (see: “haste makes waste,” with thanks to my Gran for drilling that into my head over the years). So I dragged the box out to the garage and started sanding all the shitty places, which is disheartening and was also taking time I did not have to spare.
I got discouraged and the project sat out there for the better part of a year, collecting cobwebs and dust. I moved it back inside. It sat there some more, leaning up against the wall in my office and taunting me.
Today, for the first time in months, I had most of a blank day stretched before me. I am gearing up for a virtual writing retreat and one of the preparation instructions is to get your space ready. I looked around my beloved home office, nearly perfect, and there was the shadowbox, awaiting further attention. And it finally hit me: once it’s hung and I’m not looking at it from six inches away, it’ll be fine. I dusted it off and grabbed the paint and the brush and carefully, slowly, with great patience, touched up the sanded parts. It looks better than fine. It looks great.
I retrieved M from his football-watching and asked him for help hanging. We found the two original giant nails Daddy had originally hung it with (I estimate close to 40 years ago now) and M pounded them into the wall after finding the stud. He stood on a ladder and used a stud finder (after making the requisite jokes by running it over his own chest while making beeping sounds, of course, because that’s what husbands do) and hit the nails and then adjusted them and the box was finally hung. I burst into tears. It’s beautiful and it’s a visual reminder of my father’s love.
After staring at it empty for awhile, amazed that it’s finally finished and hung once again, I gathered all my tchotchkes that have been scattered and waiting for a home and populated my new-again shadow box. It even has some of the cats from my long-ago collection. It’s a little piece of my daddy, right here in my sacred space. I keep turning my head to look at it, and it occurs to me that perhaps the timing isn’t quite right as now I may just be too distracted to focus during my writing retreat.
Nah. It’s supposed to be there. Look—It’s already encouraging me to write! Thank you, Daddy.
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