About a month after the fire, my brother-in-law Gene, a commercial contractor by trade, tipped me to a home renovation show called Holmes on Homes. It was, I think, his sly way of preparing me for the renovation to come. General Contractor Mike Holmes, a Canadian cross between GI Joe and Mr. Clean, hosts the show. His gig is simple: he shows up at homes whose construction projects have gone awry and "makes it right.”
It’s a simple but effective formula. Each week, Mike corrects the evils done by some previous contractor, and restores all that is good and right in the world. First we hear the heart-rending tale of woe, then Mike gets to work. Walking through the home, this bulldog in denim overalls affects a convincing air of disgusted outrage over the failure of others and mixes it with a fair measure of exasperation that he alone, among all of god’s creatures, must now make it right. Then he tears the place apart. Every misplaced socket or irregular cabinet spacer is an excuse to pour a new foundation, rewire an entire house, and tear the kitchen to shreds. “Look at that paint!,” he yells, shaking his exasperated head. “It’s all gotta go.” And the next cut shows his crew dutifully ripping everything to the studs.
I exaggerate about the paint, but you get the idea. In the black and white world of Mike Holmes, nothing is good enough.
Each show concludes with the mandatory “reveal” when the grateful homeowners get to oooo, ahh, and weep over the miracles of granite and drywall Mike hath wrought. The show’s measure of added charm lives in the fact that most of the homes are modest suburban tract homes in which the most pedestrian of appliances gleam like Vikings. Mike gets hugged a lot. It’s the show's mix of horror and fascination--coupled with a firmly Protestant sense that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things and the way is clear -- that wins the hearts of anyone who’s ever had a handyman cut a corner. I love it.
Strangely, Charlie does too.
He walked in while I was watching an episode one day and became engrossed with the whole thing. What in a nearly-seven year old boy would care about the trials and tribulations of witless homeowners eluded me, but I suppose all the hammering and crashing of walls had its own adolescent attraction, and I’m so happy when I can just kick it on the sofa with my kid that as long as it isn’t some incomprehensible and terribly loud cartoon, I’m fine. Any discernable narrative will do.
Charlie then took to watching the show without me. Dutifully using his new found literacy (the wonders of first grade, when the world opens like a unfussed Mimosa), he would scroll to it on the TiVo and punch it up on a lazy Sunday morning, in between episodes of Ben10 and Smashlab (another show that glorifies in destruction and mayhem, this time in the name of science.)
The year of the house stretches on, and while Elicia and I dream of kitchens to come and collect samples of Saltillo floor tile and soapstone counters, Charlie goes about his first grade life in seeming peace, at ease with the impermanence of it all and the strangeness of this rented American life.
Today, though, as he and I curled up in the light of the setting sun watching Mike deliver a tiny little kitchen to another hugging wife, he quietly turned to me and said, “I wish he would come to our home.”
That’s all. Nothing more.
Charlie is not one who easily speaks his feelings. But if I listen carefully enough, sometimes he speaks volumes.
I quietly ruffled his hair and assured him that we would one day soon have our home back.
I said that we didn’t need Mike Holmes because we had Steve Pallrand. The name is not as poetic, but the hopes, now much higher.
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