Summary

Alison Tennent recounts a childhood memory of selecting wallpaper for her new room, while drawing parallels to her current experience of painting a garage door in Queensland.

Abstract

The author reflects on the simple yet profound joy of painting, recounting her childhood excitement over choosing a beautiful wallpaper with balloons, despite financial constraints. Her parents' willingness to fulfill her desire for this wallpaper is a poignant memory of generosity and love. In the present, as she paints in the sweltering Queensland heat, she is reminded of her past experiences with painting, from her first shared flat in Glasgow to the transformation of a dingy woodwork at Cabbage Tree Point. Each stroke of the brush resurfaces memories of her youth, her family's struggles, and the uncomplicated happiness of making a house a home.

Opinions

The author cherishes the wallpaper with balloons from her childhood, viewing it as a symbol of hope and beauty amidst struggles.
She regards the act of painting not just as a chore but as a meaningful, almost therapeutic, activity that connects her to her past.
The author holds her mother in high esteem for her generosity, both in spirit and resources, despite their financial circumstances.
She appreciates the effort and skill involved in wallpapering and painting, acknowledging the care taken by her parents in decorating her room.
The act of decorating is seen as a way to transform and elevate one's living space, reflecting personal taste and creating a sense of home.
There is a sense of longing and nostalgia for the author's childhood and the simpler times associated with it.

The Wallpaper With The Balloons

The breeze is helpful in the way toddlers are, shimmying the plastic drop cloths, gently tugging them free to float towards the paint, scattering spatters and wafting insects to their doom.

Minute creatures have been nose-diving into my iced water, drowning with cool relief in search of respite from a lackadaisical Queensland morning. We’ve already beaten the estimated temperature by two degrees, six weeks into Spring.

My skin is greasy with sunblock, factor balaclava, visor clamped to my head. I’ve brushed and hosed the door down, it dried almost instantly in the rising heat, and now I’m patiently applying masking tape, before beginning to brush primer on the greedy surface, in long, steadfast strokes.

Always when I paint, in this case a garage roller door leading to a spacious yard, I am reminded of all the times in my life I’ve offered myself to this task. In the first flat I shared with a boyfriend in Glasgow, the landlord was delighted to have two willing slaves who would work just for the cost of the paper and paint. We made what had been a dank, dirty little cave into a much brighter and homelier little cave. I was particularly proud of painting the doors in two tones, in the long ago and far away.

And later at Cabbage Tree Point, carefully transforming dingy woodwork, gently covering wear and tear with care.

But memory drifts back down neglected pathways to a time earlier even than that, the feel of a paintbrush in my hand, the smell of turpentine, and all the lost years and oceans between then and now fade, and I feel again the quiet pleasure of helping to add sunshine yellow to my bedroom in the little flat in Eastwood I always think of when I hear the word home.

We were poor. Everything was a struggle when I was growing up. But by the time I was 13, things were easing a little. And I was to have my new room decorated. We were leaving behind the towers of damp, windswept concrete for small, dry tenements. Luxury.

It was a bus and a short walk to the shop in Skirving Street. Or perhaps it was Minard Road, time nibbles away at the corners of memories, leaving only the solid core. I would give every penny I have or ever will have to make that trip again with my mum.

I thought to find something simple, to match our unspoken but inescapable budget, but my eyes gleamed when I saw the wallpaper with the balloons.

It was the most beautiful wallpaper I had ever seen. Each strip had dozens of hopeful pastel balloons, soaring airily upwards, your eyes rising again and ever with them. They were delicately drawn, red, blue, yellow and green. I felt longing tug within me.

Noting my gaze, my mum insisted. This was the wallpaper we would have. I pointed to a simpler paper, flecks of pink, brown and cream, perfectly serviceable, half the price. But my mother, the most materially generous women I have ever known, who often had little but would always share it, insisted upon my heart’s desire.

It took my dad forever to match the paper. Have you ever hung wallpaper? If there’s a tricky pattern you have to be extremely careful, or you end up with a tragicomedy on the walls, instead of a visual feast. Mother scraped the walls by hand and started on the paint. Father lathered paste on paper and fought the air bubbles for smooth victory. Rain raged a complementary dance on bedroom windows.

Granted leave to help, I cautiously painted door frames, afraid I wouldn’t meet acceptable standards. For one week in 1981 I was pampered and part of a special project, dedicated just to me. I was given what I longed for. The wallpaper with the balloons.

Wiping the humidity from my sunglasses, I stop to adjust the visor which helps protect me from bountiful sunshine, here in our garden on the other side of the world.

I dip my paintbrush carefully, wipe off the excess, and keep painting in smooth sweeps. Just like mum showed me.

Copyright Alison Tennent 2020, all rights reserved. Scottish by birth, upbringing and bloodline, Australian by citizenship. If you’re reading this anywhere but Medium, this work may have been plagiarized.