I missed brunch because I was in Indiana swinging a hammer.
The construction project was my childhood home, the house that had belonged to my late mother, Gisi. A few weeks earlier, my brother and I had been tearing out floors and ceilings and hauling away debris. More than sixty cubic yards came out of the place before rebuilding could really begin.
Now the work was plumbing and carpentry.
That sounded more hopeful than demolition, although it was still dirty and physical and slow. A house does not care what else is on the calendar. It needs the pipe connected, the board cut, the damaged part opened up, and then the next damaged part dealt with.
The trips had started after my mom died in July. I was trying to keep Reonomy moving in New York while getting back to Indiana to work on the place. Some invitations got a cheerful no. Some weekends belonged to the house before they began.
When a friend asked whether I was already on a flight to Chicago, the answer was yes. I was heading back to build and rebuild, then return to the city and pick up everything waiting there.
There was no clean separation between grieving and construction. The house was hers. It was ours. It was also a stack of immediate problems that could be attacked with tools. Plumbing and carpentry gave the weekend a list.
I did not know how long the whole restoration would take. That part was still open. For this trip, I knew what I was doing: get to Indiana, swing the hammer, and keep moving the childhood home from torn apart toward usable again.