After many years of determined effort, I've achieved a solid, enduring relationship with my roof. I wonder how many other Americans can truthfully say the same thing?
The roof and I have been together since 1993. I didn't have any animosity toward the old one. It was made of cedar shingles. The prior owners told us it was fine when we bought the house, but after a couple of years we realized it had started leaking during rainy weather.
The contractor we hired for the job was first rate. In what seemed like a blink, his crew replaced the aging cedar with tidy new composition shingles. They're supposed to last for 25 years, and that guarantee caused a bittersweet moment when I handed over the check.
"You did great work," I said to the roofer. "It's too bad we won't need you to come back until 2018."
"True enough," he agreed. "That's one of the ironies of this business."
My roof and I spend a lot of quality time together between Halloween and Christmas. Each week brings a new blizzard of falling leaves. A giant beech tree adds hundreds of nut shells to the mix.
Some roofs are steep, scary, and hazardous to visitors, but mine is pleasantly non-threatening. The house is a 1957 suburban ranch style with a daylight basement. The front half of the roof slopes gently toward the street; the other half slopes to the back. Moving around with my blower to clear off the relentless accumulation of autumn's flotsam isn't difficult.
For awhile I was annoyed having to repeat the procedure over and over until all the trees were bare. Climbing up and down a ladder every week is near the bottom on my list of favorite things. But I'm a history buff, and one day I suddenly thought, "This isn't really a problem. An average guy back in 1350 would kill to have my roof. "
Those layers of composition shingles are shielding me from nature's pitiless onslaught. It the roof wasn't there, wet leaves and pine needles would be piling up daily in every room, trashing the furniture and clogging the shower drains. Now THAT would be something to complain about.
Sometimes I linger on the roof after the clean-off is finished. Staring toward the horizon in all directions puts me in a contemplative mood. The world of the street goes on but I feel far away, almost liked I've stepped into a quiet, solitary, parallel universe.
One thing I contemplate occasionally is a roof-based novel that could be made into a film or TV series. A secret cult of roof dwellers seems like a compelling idea. I also toy with the notion that my roof might be a massive, intelligent entity like the ocean in 'Solaris.' So far nothing's on paper, not even a movie treatment. I'm great at coming up with ideas but lousy at story development.
I give the roof a lot of credit for keeping my ego under control. The maintenance it requires has nothing to do with my self-esteem or social standing in the community. It's a task that must get done, and putting it off would only put me on the slippery slope to eventually saying, "I'm too
good for that." Not going to happen.
Many secrets hover within every family domicile. Occupants come and go. Plans are made and revised, dreams glow and fade, lives take their course. It makes me think of the old saying: If walls could talk. The walls here probably think I'm a cipher. I've never paid much attention to any of them over the years.
But on top of the house it's a different world. There's a special feeling up there. If that roof could talk, I'm pretty sure it'd say lots of nice things about me.