a moment in the day: paint chips

Stephen and I stand in the room that will someday be our bedroom: paint-splattered wood floor, army helicopter stickers on the wall, the exposed drywall where the ugly prefab fireplace was demolitioned over the weekend. We have a little stack of paint chips and Stephen's holding one to the wall, up against the wood molding around the door, and we're talking about color.

I've felt so emotional throughout this house process, grumpy and sleep deprived and periodically wanting to burst into tears because, say, Stephen announces that we'll have to keep our section of the sidewalk clear and then nudges a weed to its death with his shoe to demonstrate. I just know the house is going to smell like old cigarettes forever, and the thought that I'll never hear the streetcar go by the house and I'll never hear the Amtrak train whistles at night fills me with grief.

The color on the paint chip is green, a late-summer green, like hot sun through waning leaves. I picked the paint chips out, and Stephen likes my choices, and that makes me incredibly proud. The choices weren't arbitrary. We've been talking color for a long time. But just the fact that my opinionated artist husband asked me to pick out the paint chips with my own eyes and is standing here, now, nodding and smiling and saying, "Yes, I think that's going to look really nice," fills me with whatever is the opposite of that grief thing I was just talking about.

He uses his hand to cover the green squares above and below the shade we're considering, and I stand back like it's a portrait in an art gallery. I say I think it's great and he says he thinks this might be it. We turn the card over to see what the name of the color is so we can make a note of it. It says, Footy Pajamas.