Sun Days on Orcas | Cohabitating with moss, mud, and mold

||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS by EDEE KULPER |||

You experience your worst winter of mold because you’ve foregone burning wood and running the heater over 62°, and instead worn your knee-length down jacket inside. It was supposed to be a good financial move. You’re now “paying” for it by having to be on mold patrol every other week. The moment you rest on your laurels, it appears with a vengeance. Note to self: burn the wood next winter and dry out that house. Said jacket has now become such an extension of your body that you no longer wear anything but black pants and a cozy flannel underneath it. The idea of dressing up or wearing something flattering no longer enters your mind. It would be wet, dirty, or overall unrealistic the minute you walked out on the dirt (mud) driveway on your dirt (mud) road.

You’ve contemplated reflooring your house for years for fear that the perpetual smell of winter and spring mold in the kids’ partly subterranean bedroom might permanently mess with their systems, despite the fact that you clean under their beds, in their drawers, and run an air filter and dehumidifier in their room during the day. Finally deciding on new, mold-free flooring is now the biggest single line item in your house expenses since you moved to the island.

You hug your children before school and notice the hint o’ mold scent on your younger one’s clean shirt. His drawers are the ones that never quite smell right once summer’s sun has passed.

The mold in your room has slowly yet aggressively spread to every unfinished wood surface that was once brand new when you moved in. Sometimes you can’t even see it unless you go above and look downward – then a light white cast appears. On other surfaces, it’s not so subtle. It’s demanding to take over a corner of the bedroom. Even all the slick plastic window and outlet surfaces are game.

It’s made its strongest appearance on cold walls that abut the attic, behind the bureau. In a moment of sanity-preserving denial, you withdraw to marvel at the stunning, myriad colors and patterns unlike any mold you’ve ever seen.

You thank the Lord for your husband, the prince who rides in on his pure white horse named Clorox and declares he will fight that mold for you to the death. And every time it resurrects, too.

You acknowledge that there are some things Clorox can’t save. Your lampshades now have light orange circles ingrained in them from the moisture. And the cherished pictures inside frames hanging on the walls have mattes now dotted with minute black splotches that don’t exactly enhance the art.

You sprint to the bathroom when you hear a child showering without remembering to turn on the moisture-sucking fan. It’s a losing battle, though, as there are no windows or doors leading to outside air in there. No matter how many times your husband has bleached or tea tree-ed those ceilings and walls, the mold just forms again in all the same places.

Your bathroom towels never dry. You smell the permanently not-so-Tide scent that returns a few days after they’ve been washed and feel thankful it’s COVID times and no one’s visiting anytime soon. You contemplate buying all new towels someday when people can again come in or stay over.

You realize that the end of your wooden spoon that sat in the dish drainer too long is blackish. You clean it vigorously and decide it’s fine to keep using – it’s the handle side, not the soup side.

You hug your husband who has come in from a few hours of paying (flooring) bills in his office and his shirt has absorbed the unique aroma that happens to be invisibly occupying that room. Mold is like wine – spend some time smelling it and you’ll start to learn the subtle intricacies of each different region.

You begin to accept that the farther you get into winter, the worse your car will look. You let it go. Washing it in your mud driveway in cold, wet weather will just freeze you and produce more mud beneath you. Going to the car wash will be a quick fix that only lasts a day or two, so you set the idea aside entirely.

You know from experience that by February, your car will look terrible and will actually get you dirty when you get out of it. There will be moss growing in the outside cracks of the car windows and between the letters of the make and model. It’s so very Northwest but it bothers you – the implication that you’re not cleaning your car  for that long, when you’d prefer being on the more meticulous end of the spectrum. But by that point, you’ll also have less natural motivation – you will have spent several months under a blanket of dark clouds and Vitamin D will be foreign to your body.

Today, sun beams into your living room for over 20 minutes! You stop everything and pull your chair up to the window – I mean right against the window – to bask like a cold lizard in the invigorating light.

You hang on because you know that in a few months, a metabolic, seasonal shift will happen within you when the light comes through more often. For now, may you know you aren’t alone in the winter mold battle, and may you enjoy all of the verdant, drippity lushness outside…the moss-covered, Cotswold-like pathways; the island’s signature green-carpeted roads; the cyclamen peeking out of rock crevices; the beautiful growth clothing the trees; the succulents thriving in their padded beds; and the droplet-covered branches sparkling in the temporary sunlight.

Happy sunny day!