Happ-enings

One summer, when I was a kid, the United Methodist Church in Palmer embarked on a project to put a new roof on its sanctuary.

The church, which is located right down the block from my dad’s service station, is built in an a-frame style, meaning that for a couple of days, we had the chance to watch those workers scurry up and down that steep roof, replacing the shingles.

At the time, I said that there was no way that I would ever do that job. In fact, a decade later, I still get nervous thinking about it.

I have never been a big fan of heights. I don’t hate them, I’m not scared of them, but if I have the choice of staying planted on the ground versus highflying in the air, I am going to go with the former option every time. Yet, in life, there are times that we have to go to new heights, both figuratively and literally, and, for this wordsmith, Sunday was one of those days.

With Christmas having faded far into the rearview, the last couple of weeks I have been working to take down the Christmas lights at my house. However, due to our spate of winter weather earlier this month, I had to wait for the snow and ice to melt off the roof before I could take the lights off of the house.

As far as I was concerned, if that snow never melted, I would be okay with it, because out of all the tasks I have had to encounter at my new place over the last couple of months, climbing on the roof to take down my Christmas lights was the one that I was dreading the most.

In November, when the lights went up, my brother was on hand to help out, and he graciously volunteered to scale the roof and hang the lights. For that, I was extremely grateful. However, he was nowhere in sight when it came to taking them down, so I was forced to conquer my fears and started climbing.

While I was able to get most of the lights down using a ladder, there was one portion of the house – the peak above the garage – that had too high of a pitch for me to reach. So, getting on the roof – a tin roof, at that – was inevitable. I just had to work up the courage to get going.

After climbing the ladder and looking at that part of my journey for some time, I took a deep breath, and, knowing there was no going back, I jumped on.

In the lead up to my climb, I had put a great deal of thought into getting onto the roof, yet I hadn’t thought much about what to do once I found myself on top of the garage. Laying on my belly parallel with the pitch, I decided that my best approach would be to scurry up to the peak, without pause, on all fours, like a dog.

As quickly as I could, I made the climb to the ridge row without incident.

Sitting there, while catching my breath, I broke the first rule when it comes to climbing to new heights: don’t look down. Not only did I look down at the ground, which seemed further away than I would have thought, but since I live on top of a large hill, I felt like I was looking down on the world.

It was not a great feeling.

Prior to making the climb, I had undone the lights on both sides of the peak as far as I could with the ladder, so I only had to navigate a short span on both sides of the ridge. On the side I scurried up, I was able to unclip the lights with ease. However, on the opposite side, I encountered a series of problems.

For starters, going up a roof is a lot easier than going down one, especially as I distanced myself from the ridge that provided some sense of security.

Secondly, my earlier efforts to unclip the lights from the ground meant that, after I undid the final clip, I was stuck holding the entire strand of lights in my hand high above the ground.

Minus a hand to hold on with, I made the decision that, instead of holding on to the lights for the rest of my journey down the roof, I would simply let them fall. While unlikely to end well, I figured I would rather break some light bulbs than my leg.

With the lights taken care of, the last thing I had to do was nail my dismount, and, let me tell you, it was not pretty.

When I had crossed the peak the first time, I decided it was best to slide down the opposite side of the roof on my bottom, like a baserunner sliding into home plate. However, on the tin, my initial slick slide quickly made me change my approach. On my second descent, I instead opted to go down on my belly, which proved to be quick and relatively painless.

Back on the ground without incident, I am sure that I was beaming with pride. Not only did I get the Christmas lights down, but I managed to do so on my own, while confronting a fear, and was no worse off for the wear.