46) The Endless List*

How strange it feels to have accomplished so much, ticked off so many boxes, completed so many projects, solved so many longstanding and complicated problems… knowing that you still have an eternity ahead of you.

You used to say years. “Five year plan.”

Can you imagine?

HA!

More like decades.

More like a lifetime.

There could be… there is… that much to do.

A forever and then some.

And somehow you find this...

Daunting?

You don’t think that would be a good descriptor. Daunting feels uneasy. Daunting feels looming… Daunting feels like that music they play in suspense movies as the camera that was focused on the protagonist zooms out to reveal them seeing the terrifyingly jagged and impossibly high peak they need to summit in order to save a lost climber. That’s daunting.

Daunting was hardly the word.

You wondered what the best descriptor would be.

It wasn’t overwhelming. That felt like a burden. This certainly didn’t feel like a burden.

You were curious. You looked it up on your phone. A quick tap tap tap and there it was…

Daunting

adjective

UK

/ˈdɔːn.tɪŋ/ US

/ˈdɑːn.t̬ɪŋ/

Add to word list

making you feel slightly frightened or worried about your ability to achievesomething:

The country was faced with the daunting prospect of overcoming four decades of division.

Synonym

intimidating

Related word

dauntingly

You thought about that. Did you occasionally worry about potential issues in your new home? Sure. Who doesn’t? But worried about your ability to achieve something pertaining to this church…?

You had already exceeded your own expectations (and for yourself - they are very rigid). Who gave a fuck about an endless list?

Not you.

********************************************************

Three days after your mom left you went in for your rotator cuff surgery. Apparently your arm had been in pretty rough shape, having to remove a spur, re-anchor the bicep, and repair the torn tissues. They also had to “force” your arm back into moving. It had frozen up. That baffled you. You had used it right up until the morning of the surgery.

When you were wheeled out and brought into recovery you asked for something to drink. They wouldn’t give you water (which was what you wanted) but they brought you ginger ale. You took a deep sip, “GINGER ALE? MORE LIKE SHIT!” You’d been told that coming out of anesthesia could be a bit… interesting.

David’s workload drastically increased. Not only was he picking up where you put everything down… figuratively, he was literally picking you up out of the recliner when you could just about move your upper body. Not only was he taking on your chores and workload but he was also physically helping you with EVERYTHING. Dressing, undressing, showering, trying to put hair back into a ponytail (total fucking disaster btw), eating when two hands were needed… the list could go on. Every basic thing one may need two hands for or any degree of strength one would easily use without so much as a thought throughout their day fell on David.

And boy did the two of you have fun with it. He joked around about running out for milk and cigarettes as he rubbed your feet when he came back from running all the way into the kitchen and then back up three flights of stairs to give you the Tylenol that you forgot to grab when you were down there earlier.

You told him that you bought intercomms so that you could summon him from anywhere in the church. That there would be no place to hide… uh… unable to communicate from. That you would be just a push of the button away. Even his workshop would be fitted with a little button. Ding. Yes Dear?

You didn’t really buy intercomms. After all… accessibility was a two way street. You both however found it hilarious nonetheless.

Your favorite though were David’s ‘diary’ entries. The ones where he’d speak like an Edwardian poet dictating his memoirs to an empty bedchamber (save for the depths of his tortured soul) as he pre-washed and scrubbed an egg covered pan… or when you’d summon him to help you with some innocuous task like zipping up your hoodie.

“Dearest Diary,” he’d start in his best Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Raven’ reading at an Indie open mic night.

“My soul doth grow weary with the aches of a thousand queries as my heart weeps with the pain of my bequest servitude to the invalid in my care.”

You’d laugh then later ask him to carry your water bottle for you and he’d throw his hand to his forehead in feigned indignation and then pick up where he had left off the last time…

“How doth one continue with such torment dearest one? My aches are those that only one forced into a state of compulsory subjection to a master… living in a realm of slavish or penal dependence might both duly comprehend and commiserate. And yet I doth persist as I have given my very being to this nuptial rite and ceremony more than two decades past.”

You shook your head and pursed your lips like a mom who wanted to scold a misbehaving child until they say something hilarious and they’d do their best not to let their kid see them laugh. Of course he would see you laugh and he’d continue…

“Is this my rightful burden dearest one? Or is this a test of the highest moral obligation and duty? How I shall bare another subsequent morrow under the rigorous conditions of aforementioned serfdom I have yet to fathom… how I might assimilate to the pressures of this wanton custodianship I have yet to ascertain… and yet I know that I must tear asunder my desires and dreams of emancipation… liberty… and autonomy as I perform the necessary duties laid before me…”

And then laughing you’d join in summoning your dreariest Edwardian dialect, “Dearest Diary I call on you for the strength of wit and physical power as I yearn to assuage my dubious circumstance along with the physical maladies of the invalid in her convalescence and my unwavering care.

Yours in shackled camaraderie,

David LeVesque”

To which he volleyed back with, “Day three of caring for Vanessa LeVesque.”

**************************************************************************

When you were a bit more mobile… no longer wincing with each bounce in your step David brought you out to his workshop to show you something. The workshop was made of rough hewn poplar. Light streamed in from the two small western facing windows. The interior had been insulated and finished with leftover wood from both numerous and disparate projects that somehow managed to come together in a cohesive, woodsy and warm space. David had outfitted the long eastern wall with peg board and hooks of varying shapes and sizes. Day by day he’d carry his tools down from the sanctuary or up from the basement and into his workshop. He’d light a joint then methodically unpack each tool bag and box, laying the contents onto the various flip top workbenches he had piecemealed together from leftover wood. One by one he’d sort and then place the tools onto the pegboard in a manner that when he was finished, the entire pegboard’s 20’ span was covered in all of his tools that fit together without touching or overlapping.

“I went on an ADHD bender… as you can see…” he had said the first time he showed off his pegboard wall completely outfitted with the entirety of his tools acquired from nearly two decades of working in the trades (and ten months working on a 131 year old maintenance needy church).

“No way… well yes way you did but… this is fabulous. I love it.” You had said as you admired the vast array of similarly grouped tools that fit together seamlessly over the length of 20 feet.

That day he had called you into the workshop for something else though… He put two joints into his mouth and lit them both together before he removed them both and showed them to you with an outstretched hand. He always gave you first dibs. They were exactly the same most days, but the gesture alone was part of the chivalry.

You plucked yours almost always the one closest to you, and put it between your lips inhaling deeply in the warm workshop. The smell of sweet incense mixed with the blue grey wisps of smoke and freshly cut wood and swirled out the south facing barn door on the cool late spring breeze. “Did you see it?” He wanted to know.

“What’s that?” You said, exhaling a large cloud of nearly transparent smoke.

David pulled then exhaled, “The list! That’s what I wanted to show you. Did you notice it?”

He pointed to the wall inbetween the workshop’s only windows. On the wall was your massive art school drawing board that he had ‘borrowed for work’ at least fifteen years ago and had used ever since. Clipped to the board was a huge piece of brown kraft of builder’s paper. Written on the builder’s paper was a long and thorough list of all of the things, the projects that you had specifically asked him to ‘help’ you with (do for you). The list was titled “Happy wife, happy life” in David’s quickly scrawled and slanted handwriting.

There was: build cat tree; build jelly cabinet base; create temporary permanent drainage solution in the sanctuary; till front lawn; till garden bed; remove asphalt from south side of church; fill hole with potting soil; plant rose bushes; plant Hydrangea; bring workbench downstairs; hang hooks x 3; hang mirrors x 2; hang new lamp; rewire lamps; put up railing in belfry; wire outlets in basement; hang tv; hang dresser mirror; install belfry windows; build bat-house…”

The list went on.

“So what do you think? Happy wife, happy life…”

“I think you should get your ass to work…”

You both thought that was pretty funny.

***************************************************************************************

Over the next two weeks David began working on the list. You’d stand around in your sling telling him what he should do ‘to make things easier for him’ as he shoveled his way through compacted clay soil mixed generously with large rocks to plant your roses. You watched him wrestle the huge 100+ pound tiller out and into the back of the SUV. You watched him do his best not to get dragged to the ground while he fought the bucking machine every inch in a hot midday sun to pull up the well rooted front lawn while you stood in the shade. “You need some water or something? I can give you a hand. Singular of course.”

“No. I’m good,” he’d said.

He called you into his workshop and you watched him hold the concrete form tube that he was using to construct Rocky’s cat tree in various positions while you hemmed an hawed over the best way to affix them to the massive tree limb that he had debarked for the scratching post. When he’d finish a project he’d hand you the marker and you’d get ‘the honors’ of crossing the task off the list.

“Oh wow… you didn’t scratch it out. You put an x in front.”

“If I scratch it out it will look bad and we won’t be able to read what you did. “

“That makes sense.”

**********************************************************************************************

Later that day the two of you hopped into your car and drove over an hour northeast to pick up a ten dollar metal cabinet locker that you had found on Facebook Marketplace.

Ten minutes before you had reached your destination David wanted to know how big the cabinet was.

“Ya know… I’m not really sure to be honest with you. I guess I should have figured that out before I bought it and we came out here huh?”

“You’re kidding right?”

“I shit you not sir. Let’s hope it fits.”

“Jesus…”

When the two of you arrived to the little street lined with lakeside cottages there was the cabinet sitting behind the little shed like the woman had told you it would be. You noticed how large the cabinet was just as David did. You exchanged the look of two people who really hoped, for different reasons, that you hadn’t just fucked this up. David bear hugged the cabinet then pulled back leaning towards the ground behind him and lifted the cabinet into the air with a deep exhale. “FUCK,” he strained, “I should have brought the dollies.”

“I probably should have planned this out better. Sometimes I don’t think of the logistics. I just tell myself it’ll work and then I picture my fingers snapping like I Dream of Jeanie and poof… there’s my cabinet all loaded up! You think that’s because you’re always the loader…”

“More like the fucking genie…” he groaned through clenched teeth as he did his best to maneuver the four foot wide and five foot tall cabinet over the bumpy lawn and freshly dug trench and (potentially) into the SUV.

You were relieved when it fit. Both of you were. On the way home you promised to get measurements next time because that could have really sucked and you stopped at the cute antique shop you had spotted on the way up. David bought you a vintage ceramic salt and peper shaker set shaped like two birds (one was for the salt and one was for the pepper) that perched on a wooden branch. In all the estate sales, thrift and antique stores you had ever been in… you had never seen a salt and pepper shaker set like this. The set was in beautiful condition. You marveled at the age and how well they had held up.

The two of you spent the rest of the ride cracking jokes about the metal cabinet that made creaky noises in the back of the SUV and how you hadn’t thought to see if it would fit; you talked about the antique store; and how pretty it was out in the country.

That night after David slid the cabinet out of the car… refusing your (single) hand and bear hugging it into the backyard behind the new fence you walked across the four way intersection at the church’s south west corner and peeled one of your church stickers from the backing before slapping it onto a blank piece of aluminum sign below the stop sign and above the other traffic sign. The sticker and church’s perspective lined up perfectly on that corner.

*********************************************************************

After walking the dog that evening you and David came home and your daughter had been waiting in the foyer for you both. It was late outside, nearly nine o’clock but it was still light out… the sky was an ever darkening soft grey blue. The church’s large address numbers glowed brightly against the wood of the broken door. The old yellow stained glass seemed to shine from within, mirroring the light from the solar lit numbers.

You wanted to show her the church sticker on the stop sign across the street. You knew she’d get a kick out of it. You told her to cross the street with you and as she did so, she turned to look back at the church before she crossed.

“Mommy?? Were those bats???”

You looked up and saw what looked like a large colony of bats. Without your glasses though you couldn’t be quite sure. Whatever they were, there were a lot of them. On closer observation you realized that they were most definitely bats and there were a LOT of them.

You watched them loop around the church in tight circles just over the peak of the sanctuary.

With each lap around the roof and the shorter north tower, they dipped and dove in a thick dotted wave of feral wings… then out of nowhere they changed course just east of the north tower and climbed vertically a good six feet before seeming to stop and hover mid-air. Then with a sudden flurry of wings and symbiotic synchrony, they dove straight down into the chimney in unison as if the entire colony of them had fused together with some invisible sinewy tether.

“What the fu……”

“MOMMY THEY’RE GOING IN THE CHURCH!! LOOK AT THEM ALL!!!”

“Oh My God!Holy. Fucking. Shit!” You said out loud. There were so many of them. They reminded you of the old Looney Tunes cartoons where an entire hive of bees would form an angry arrow pointed towards their target before the inevitable but sting attack. Outside of nature documentaries, you had never seen this many bats… let alone this many bats pouring into your chimney.

“MOMMY DO YOU SEE THIS?!”

You sure the fuck did.

“DAVID!? WHERE ARE YOU? ARE YOU OUTSIDE? YOU HAVE TO COME SEE THIS!!!” Except that by the time you found David the majority of the bats were already safely nestled in your defunct chimney save for two stragglers that entered the flume alone, several minutes apart.

“So now what are we going to do???”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean?’ I’m talking about what just appeared to be the entirety of this county’s bat population flying into our fucking chimney..!”

David laughed… “I guess we’ll just add it to the list…”

It occurred to you later as you walked back into the church that you could add, “remove the county’s bat population from your fucking chimney,” all you wanted… but you still had absolutely zero idea how to do that legally, safely, or practically… This was a problem… a chore… a task… pfffft… potentially a massive fucking undertaking in every sense of the word… and though this was not a first ‘massive undertaking’ in the long list of projects you had checked off… this was the first time that you had a “to do” without a way “to do.”

A lone bat checking out the chimney the following evening.

I’m not really sure where they went.

No clue.

Because the following evening I went out with my phone and tripod in hand. I carefully balanced the tripod on the rocky dirt berm being sure to frame the chimney and roof in the best vantage point (while achieving some sort of aesthetically pleasing composition). I was after all.. about to capture that elusive (and probably viral) ‘bats descending en masse upon church chimney’ footage.

“You need to take a video of it… will probably go viral,” a friend suggested.

I agreed. And for the last 20 something hours I waited on that money shot… or in this case video.

When I had finally found David the night before, he had the wherewithal to check the time on his watch… figured that maybe the bats would come hauling ass back into the chimney at roughly the same time the following night. Animals have routines too. It was 9:05pm.

I wasn’t going to chance missing anything so the tripod and camera went up at 8:45 that very next evening.

At 8:55 my family and I went back outside, crossing the street to sit on the little concrete stoop beneath the large rock wall directly across from the church. We had the perfect seat. Directly in front of us was the church’s entrance alight with the address numbers and the little table lamp in the vestibule that we turned on every night should the kids need to come upstairs to use the sanctuary bathroom. The arch of yellow stained glass took on an ethereal glow lit from within by the lamp.

Juxtaposed against the glowing entrance and stately red brick was a swiftly darkening steel blue sky peppered with thick grey clouds that seemed to unfurl like a skein of wool whose edges had been brushed into a softened and frayed oblivion.

We waited.

The five of us sat on the cool concrete, our eyes fixed on the sky.

Nothing.

Minutes clicked by and the kids became restless… playful banter that soon teetered on the verge of bickering.

“Hey Vaness… I don’t think that we’re going to see any bats,” David finally said at 9:05pm.

“I’m going inside!” Said our eldest as he jumped off the concrete stoop and bolted across the street and into the glowing church entry.

“Wait! I’m coming too!” His younger brother hot on his heels.

“Yeah mom… I don’t think we’re going to see any bats tonight… I’m going to go inside too.” And our youngest was up and on her feet, crossing the road and disappearing into the church.

“I wonder where they are?” I had said to David when the kids were out of sight. “There were so many of them… why do you think we didn’t see them going in or out of the chimney tonight? You think they left later last night? I read that they don’t always roost in the same place.”

That morning I had delved into the search: bat roosting. Interestingly enough bats have different roost spots for different times of the year and even use multiple spots during a single season. Which made sense. Had a colony of bats been living in our chimney for years, one might have expected a three story flume filled nearly to the top with guano. I did at least. I pictured a veritable shit stack well on it’s way to spilling over. Because of course l did.

David and I came to the conclusion that the bats had left the chimney either the night before or early in the morning. Where they went to? We didn’t have the slightest clue. As long as it wasn’t inside the church we didn’t really care.

We did though have a good laugh at our own expense. When we delivered the dead bat to the bat rehabilitation expert Veronica,* she had suggested that we put up a bat house or two to deter the occasional bat from making its way inside our church. Having a little home on a tall eve would probably do the trick.

After witnessing what I can only describe as the entirety of Steuben county’s bat population dive into our chimney though… the thought of a “couple of bat houses” doing the trick was comical. The couple of bat houses would be akin to razing all of Brooklyn’s homes then setting up a pop up canopy tent to house the whole borough: grossly inadequate.

There were so many bats in fact, that my youngest… the one who LOVES sleeping in the sanctuary all by herself (because ‘it is so peaceful’ and also an entire floor away from her brothers) has since slept down in the basement as close as she can stand to get to them. She loves animals. Even bats. The volume of bats though has even her a bit on edge.

At this point though I honestly think that the best answer is to leave well enough alone. What we will do is take a little looksie. David has a tiny camera scope that he used to use for work; fishing wires through the wall without having to cut a gaping hole. We are going to poke it through a little foam sealed gap in the chimney that runs through the primary bathroom. Once in there we can hopefully get a little look at absolutely nothing but an empty chimney or… a whole lot of looks looking right back at our looking look.

And then what?

My therapist would probably say, “Why are you even wasting your energy on hypotheticals?” And I’d shrug and nod my head in agreement and then I’d also try to come up with a solution, “just in case ya know?” She would probably stare at me in exasperation.

I get it.

But back to the problem at hand…

This one though? The whole bat chimney thing?

Zero solution. Not even plural solutions. Singular solution. We don’t even have on viable solution.

Could we cap the chimney?

In theory sure.

Would that be feasible at the height and the lift we have access to as well as the potential to possibly trap some bats inside the capped chimney or have a cloud of bats immediately ascend into my husband’s face some 60+ feet up in the air in a metal basket that rocks exponentially more with each foot it moves away from the main anchor point?

I’d rather not find out. Not that I’d be up there, because there is absolutely no way that I’d be up in that basket looking into that chimney. Not for a billion dollars… ok maybe. I don’t know… you get the point. Fuck that lift. Fuck that chimney. Fuck that bumping, jostling basket (the only thing keeping you from being a final thud on the hard ground below). It’s a hard no for me boss.

After David’s roof incident… the incident that almost kersplat him on the south side of the church (across the street from a hospital which even though it’s closed is probably a little comical in a morbid way), I’ve been far more leery about him being up on the roof. He on the other hand is unfazed. No fucks given. He just needs to make sure that he “gets a real harness next time.” Personally I’d have done that the first time.

We’ve been brainstorming how to get safe access to the roof (for him not me) that is way more accessible and affordable than the lift. That lift is not cheap to rent. Also puts a ton of pressure on you to figure out and fix a shit ton of problems in a very short time. It would be ideal to be able to work on the roof then have the luxury of seeing how the patches worked after a good rain AND the ability to then get back on the roof to adjust as needed (and one of these days hopefully not).

We’re not having much luck. We have decided… I have decided though that there should be at least another 2-3 anchor points installed on the roof and belfry. David agreed. I had thought of maybe a small permanent scaffolding or sort of like a fire escape stair case / ladder ? I don’t know though if such a thing exists or how we might retrofit something.

David came up with the idea of getting a 40’ ladder to hop onto the roof above our bedroom… it would weigh an absolute ton… and then climbing that roof with a 20’ ladder to get to the peak. And THEN once he got there… after doing some really dangerous shit… he could attach himself to the anchor point.

Abso-fucking-lutely-NOT.

Except I know my husband and fair is fair… I’m the same way… it’s tough to dissuade either one of us when we’re set on something so… just in case he decided that he was in fact going to do the climb I told him that he was going to do what he was going to do but… if he was going to do what he was going to do… then he absolutely had to install another tether point in the belfry so that at no point would he not be protected by fall gear. He says he’s not going to fall.

But here’s the thing: none of this craziness that we’re trying to figure out for the roof matters in regard to the issue or non issue at hand… the bats… because even if we can still feasibly get to the roof (safely) the chimney would be a whole other issue that would involve getting another ladder onto another roof and then a fourth ladder to get onto the chimney itself which doesn’t even factor in carrying up tools and or chimney caps.

My point in all of this is I’m not about to get in a lift or rent a lift for what may or may not be a problem… nor am I willing to let my husband ‘Chutes and Ladders land’ it up to the chimney - tether or not. What I am willing to do is look for gaps in the chimney from the comfort of the church’s interior… and put up with the occasional inside bat.

I think my therapist would think that was a pretty good idea too.

While there are unfortunately no bats in this time lapse, it’s still pretty cool (watch how quickly it gets dark once the sun sets) and there ARE pigeons so… that’s something. The irony of the bats is that they’re one of the few problems that could have probably made us some money had we gotten a good video of their dive into our chimney LOL.

The horizontal roof just above the downspout is 39’ off the ground. It’s another 20’ ish to the top of the chimney… which is on another roof and would require another ladder precariously perched on the north tower.

I’m all for letting sleeping dogs… or in this case bats… hang (see what I did there) around.