The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,101
house was transformed. But transformation, as any used-to-be advice columnist can tell you, is a process.
We’d done so much—replaced the roof, and the exterior steps (several times), and the rotted columns on the piazza; rebuilt the chimney; and rewired the entire house. But there was still so much left to do. It was the unexpected stuff that really made me anxious, the stuff you couldn’t plan for. Hardly a day had passed when Lorne hadn’t called out, “Hey, Celia. Can you come here a sec? There’s something I need to show you.”
The thing was never something you’d want to see, a hilarious meme or adorable cat video. No, it was always something rotted or broken or incorrectly installed, which was going to mean more delays and more money. Now when Lorne called out, “Can you come here a sec?” I called back, “Now what?”
Dealing with Brett Fitzwaller’s whims and overly zealous interpretation of the building code only made it harder. I did call Trey right away and he said he’d look into it, but there wasn’t much more I could do. And that, I realized sometime during my fourth lap through the house, was the thing that made me so nervous.
Lorne looked away from the sheet of drywall he was hammering and said, “Is there something I can do for you, Celia?”
I took the hint and went upstairs. Pacing through the bedrooms wasn’t helping either. I needed something to do. Finally, I went to the yarn cave and got my knitting out of the basket.
We’d only had two more crafting sessions since that first gathering. I’d had so much fun talking with the others and checking out their projects that I hadn’t finished more than a couple of inches on mine. For me, talking while knitting was a lot like trying to rub my stomach and pat my head: I couldn’t do both at once. Knitting required my complete attention.
That turned out to be a good thing.
I sat down in Beebee’s squashy old pink chair, stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth and my needle into the first stitch of the next row, and started to knit, slowly, pausing every couple of minutes to take a deep breath and consciously drop my shoulders so my stitches didn’t get too tight. It wasn’t relaxing but it was absorbing. Pretty soon, I forgot about the money and the now whats and the what ifs. I gave all my attention and mental energy to sliding the needle through the back of the stitch, wrapping the yarn around the tip and pulling it through the loop, then sliding it from the left needle to the right.
After about fifteen minutes, my tongue slid back into my mouth of its own accord. After twenty, I was able to keep my shoulders down and my stitches loose without the breathing breaks. Half an hour in, muscle memory took over and my fingers found their rhythm. I didn’t have to think about it anymore, didn’t have to repeat the steps in my mind, which meant my mind was free to wander, and remember.
Something about seeing those two inches of knitting grow to four, then six, then eight, helped remind me of all that had happened in the last month and a half, the seemingly insurmountable obstacles I’d faced and, surprisingly, overcome, one by one by one. I don’t recall having many truly meaningful conversations with my mother, but now I remembered something she often said. “If God wants you to be somewhere or do something, He’ll supply everything you need at the moment you need it, and not one moment before. Never forget, Celia, God is in the business of Just-in-Time Inventory.”
I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. I hadn’t thought about God in a long time either. We weren’t really on speaking terms anymore. Though he remained a member of the congregation until he died, Sterling and I stopped going to St. Philip’s after the kidnapping. Sterling didn’t want to risk running into Calpurnia, and after everything that had happened, I didn’t feel like running into God. But as I sat there, knitting and thinking and remembering, I could just about believe that Somebody was trying to send me a message, if only to tell me that my mother had been right. Every time I thought I’d reached the end of my rope, I’d reached out in desperation and found just one more handhold.
When my marriage ended, the door to motherhood opened. When