My mother and I paint in patches, across a long stretch of wall that bears the marks of our constant abuse to it. Yet, surprisingly, as terrified as I am that our sections will never meet, it only takes a brush stroke to sew two ends of our world together.

I've been searching hard for calm the past few days. My mother and I are quite often at sixes and sevens. We usually have three good days together where she believes I'm a good daughter, and I believe she has a heart at all. By the end of the three days, it only takes one thing to set her off. This time, it was the idea that my reading The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan somehow inhibited me from priming our closet for painting. Okay, technically it's an altar — we call it an amachi room, which is essentially a room devoted to our [Hindu] gods. With all the candles and incense burning in that room, it's coated in a layer of soot that has soaked into our lovely off-white walls (I say this with the greatest contempt). So we decided to paint it a very pale green, which involves manual priming and eventually painting and sealing the wood trim along the walls. Earlier this summer, my mother removed pictures, lights, candles, and assorted religious articles from the room, all too sure that she would finish painting the room that week itself. In true Indian tradition, that stuff is still outside the closet as I type, but the inside of the room is thankfully almost white. The contrast between the original sooty walls and this new white is amazing, but I'm afraid it won't stay that way for long.

The hardest part about priming that room though, is that the light is so poor it casts an orange-y shade on the walls. It's probably because of this light in the first place that we didn't see the mess in the making so we could solve it. I guess it's a small blessing the primer had low fumes, because we spent the better part of an hour coating the closet in this stuff, and got it all over the lower part of the trim where it was impossible to paint without using a brush; in addition, I still have dried primer on my hands and elbows in small quantities from two days ago. It's a never-ending battle, I swear, but I'm only looking forward to actually painting the room. Painting like this is a huge step for this family, who forbade anything other than wallpaper for the walls of our old house. However, this house is also ten times more fragile than the other, and when Rita and Katrina came near Houston last year, I was on my heels ready to run. I mean, if the dog, as a little puppy, could make a hole in the wall to the brick, something must be wrong.

In other news, I am linked in all forms of print to a suspicious fellow named Mr. Wiggles. If seen, bring hugs, muffins, and the occasional miniature poodle for company.