Anne McCaffrey died today.

I first fell in love with her Crystal Singer books, and then… I escaped into Pern and stayed there a very long time.  She provided me with more hours of entertainment than I can ever calculate, and was the first woman scifi/fantasy writer I ever read.  Her death was not untimely or unexpected – she was 85 years old. Still, it feels like a loss.

Added: Foxfier comments, “I still get teary-eyed thinking about the Masterharper’s death.”  I do too.

I saw this on Wil Wheaton’s Google+ feed and it resonated with me because my mother and I just talked about this yesterday. She commented that someone in the family was going to turn 60 this year and it shocked me. Mom wanted to know why I was so surprised – after all, she said, “You know that I’m [this age].” Frankly, that shocks me too. It shocks me that I’m 43 years old. I don’t feel any different. Sure, I know that I’m wiser and more mature than I was twenty years ago. I know that. I may respond to stimuli differently, but deep down, I don’t feel any different than the 20 year old idiot that I was. And the kicker is that my mother said she feels exactly the same way.

I can’t be the father of an 8-year-old girl. I’m 16, playing Pac-Man at the bowling alley in Londonderry, NH. I’m 15 in the middle of a “couples skate” at Spinning Wheels roller rink. I’m 14 playing Jumpman on my next door neighbor’s Commodore 128. I still buy Hot Wheels at the supermarket. I still don’t understand girls. I’m not a good dancer. I buy too many jackets. I don’t have any of the answers a dad should have.

Maybe none of us do.

We’ve finally finished – except for the ridge cap – shingling the roof on our addition. It’s been about twenty years since I helped shingle a roof and I certainly hope I never will again.  My hands and the front of my knees are burned – like a bad sunburn – from the heat of the roof and shingles. (And the back of my knees are raw because when the heat was too much, I wore kneepads and the straps chafed.) I’m all about the girl power and equal rights, but let me tell you, I was so humbled and impressed by my husband and son-in-law’s ability to work far beyond reasonable expectations that I cite Katherine unsarcastically:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labor both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience—
Too little payment for so great a debt.
[...]
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?

Painful labor, indeed. And I definitely cop to the “soft and weak and smooth, unapt to toil.”

I’m sure, in a country of 300 million people, there are women roofers. (More power to you, hon.)  As for me and my house, I will serve inside as much as possible, in decently conditioned air.  Well, I say that, but when it’s time to put the siding up I’ll be out there again. I can’t keep up with the men, but I can help some, and I will. Still, I’d be remiss not to say how much they impressed me, getting this job done in a heat index that often exceeded 100 degrees.  And the construction proceeds apace…

I’ve been really swamped with work lately, between my Galty new proletarian job and the remnants of my web development business. That will ease up next week and I’ll be writing regularly again.

In the meantime, the construction on my home addition continues apace.  We’ll spend a good deal of the weekend shingling.  I’ve noticed that this is the only construction going on anywhere in the neighborhood.  The Gulf Coast economy is still suffering from Obama’s permitorium. The fact that it’s unofficial isn’t making the pain of it any less – in fact I’d say the unofficial nature of it adds insult to injury.

If nothing else, construction has cured me of any lingering vanity I retained at age 43. There was a time, not so very long ago, when I would not so much have gone to the grocery store without being presentably dressed, with my hair at least decently groomed and my face made up. Now it’s not quite full-on POWM territory, but I can see that on the horizon. Well, this is just a season we’re in. I keep telling myself that, at least. When it’s all over, I think I’ll go do something girly like have a spa day.

The winnowing process imposed on us by the construction has been… instructive.  Where does the time and money go? Every decision is a crucial one these days.  And our prayer and devotional lives have suffered. The parable of building our house on the sand comes to mind, especially since the concrete foundation literally was poured onto the sand.  (Sand is the customary fill under houses around here.)

Does it count as devotional time if I sing “Blessed Be Your Name” to myself while I work on the roof? And yet I know God’s not keeping a scoresheet of my ratio of devotional to non-devotional minutes of the day.  To the contrary, every single minute is to be lived for God’s glory and that’s a standard I will never, can never, meet.  Thank God for grace and mercy, and for the construction project He is undergoing in me – one infinitely harder than a simple mother-in-law suite.