Today, in between visits to the nursing home where my father lingers in hospice care, I decided to tackle the sink. It’s a two-basin sink, with fittings of brass and white porcelain that resemble upside-down tulips. Remodeling the bathroom about ten years ago, with fresh flooring and a cherrywood cabinet, was a major bone of marital contention for several years leading up to it. The green-light for the remodeling project came, unfortunately, too late to save the marriage. But I ended up with the house in the divorce, and so I’ve still got the lovely sink and the cherrywood cabinetry.
The cold water handle in the sink I use, however, has been getting looser and looser for the past couple of months, and today, with an empty house and a few hours to myself, I tackle the project.
Only one of the two sinks actually works anymore. Several years ago something went seriously wrong—the kind of “wrong” you actually call a plumber for—with one of the sets of faucets. I couldn’t find an exact replacement anywhere. And so, loathe to replace both sets of pretty porcelain tulip faucets, I suggested swapping one set for the other. Because of the bathroom layout, nobody ever used the second sink anyway. The plumber cannibalized what he needed from the working side of the counter and shut off the water supply to the sink less traveled.
To my optimistic eye today, it looked like another round of cannibalizing was in order, this time swapping one handle and screws for another. It had to be done sometime. I could envision the handle falling off in my hand some morning as I was brushing my teeth. I took all the junk off the counter, wiped it down, and grabbed the smallest screwdriver I could find from the collection in a ceramic planter next to the kitchen sink. I don’t know why I have a bunch of screwdrivers sitting there next to my birdwatching binoculars, they date back to the early days of marriage and full-time motherhood when screwdrivers just sat wherever my ex-husband decided to put them.
Now, more than twenty-five years later I look at the ugly yellow ceramic planter and think “I should do something about this.” But in the meantime, as pathologically disorganized as I am, I know I can at least find four things in an emergency—my car keys, my cell phone, clean underwear, and a screwdriver.
