The Virtue of Imperfection

The first time I traveled to Barb's parents' house in Rocky Point, NY, I was stunned and seduced by the apparent perfection of the neighborhood in which they lived. It wasn't a rich neighborhood, just solidly middle class, but everything was perfect. The driveways were all stainless black, sealed every two years. The cars were clean and beautifully maintained, even if not new. The lawns were green, uniform, and mowed. It seemed so much less decrepit than salt-bitten Syracuse, or, God forbid, Binghamton, both exemplars of Rust Belt decay.

The same perfection that wowed me Barb saw as the epitome of the sort of decadent suburban conformity that drives kids (like Barb) to rebel and flee to college or the decaying cities that are so much richer in culture.

Now that I own a house that is somewhat decrepit (it was built in 1925), I struggle with my desire for a perfection that I cannot achieve. I shouldn't even try.

A couple of months ago we got our wood floors refinished. They were in terrible shape, and I knew that there was no way to perfect them -- too many patched areas, scars, and stains. When they were done, I was satisfied that we had made a big improvement in the aesthetics and preservation of our old house. As soon as the contractor told us we could, we started to move back in. The first big piece of furniture to go into the living room was the couch, which has a hide-a-bed and therefore weighs about the same as a Harley-Davidson Fatboy. Barb was eight months pregnant. We couldn't carry it to its place, so we put it on its steel casters and rolled it across the floor. Sure enough each caster cut a furrow in our floor's new finish.

I wanted to curse and rend my clothes and tear my hair out. I didn't because I knew that in a week I wouldn't care so much and two months down the road I wouldn't care at all. I was wrong; a couple of months later I'm not indifferent to the furrows in our floor -- I like them. Like a scar on your flesh, or laugh lines in your face, imperfections tell stories and establish landmarks to guide your memory on its journey into the past. Because of the flaw in our floor I will live with an everpresent reminder of a particular week in our life, one of the last weeks before Barb and I became parents.