“What a hole, what a hole!”

I remember my dad hollering that when he dug a new well in the backyard of our home 45 years ago.  (Actually, he didn’t dig anything, but a guy he paid $50 sank a very impressive hole in the ground.)

That’s the last time I saw a man happy about a hole. These days, I live with a man who flinches every time he hears the word.

Let me explain.

I love art, especially vintage oil paintings. I like to study their origins and collect them. My collection is small and valuable only to me, but it fills every wall in our home. When I find a new piece, we have to rearrange what’s already hung to find new display space. The worst part of the process? With each new painting comes another nail in the wall…. and Widdle winces with every thump of the hammer.

Putting tiny holes in walls causes him so much personal pain, you’d think I was pulling his toenails. When I ask why he hates them so, he says they look bad. But how can a hole look bad when it’s hidden by a painting?

My solution was simple: I don’t ask him to hang things any more. Instead, I sneak around and do it while he’s at work. Once he figured that out, he quietly hid every hammer in our home. I’m reduced to driving nails with a rubber hammer he doesn’t know I have.

Even when there’s nothing new to hang, I like to rearrange pieces--try different groupings, or place similar frames together. And sometimes it takes awhile before you know where something should go.

Recently I hung a small oil of a horse over the secretary in the living room. It didn’t look right so I moved it to the dining room, where it looked worse, and thence to the kitchen, where it looked ridiculous. Currently it sulks in an awkward space above a church pew in the spare bedroom. It still doesn’t look exactly right, but there’s nowhere else to put it except the attic.

A few months ago we had a family portrait made—me, Widdle and our beloved Nicky. A retro, black-and-white pose was enlarged and printed on a 16 x 20 stretched canvas. So far, so good. I had in mind the perfect setting—in the hall, above a bookcase filled with antique, silver-framed photos.

I ordered a lovely, ornate frame online, which came without the purchased framing clips. After several weeks of email wrangling, the wrong clips arrived. I gave up, and the portrait sat untouched for weeks until Widdle made his own metal clips. Finally, a good three months after the photo session, Widdle, with surprisingly good grace, hung our lovely family portrait high in the hall.

And it looked strange.

I immediately knew the viewing angle was all wrong, but said nothing. The next morning I walked into the hall and looked up at our images. My face resembled a fat harvest moon and Nicky’s eyes seemed squinty, as if she expected a beating.

“It looks awful there,” I said. “It has to move.”

Widdle smiled grimly and said nothing… but later I heard a muffled banging in the back bedroom. It sounded like a 55-year-old head meeting a plaster wall.

Ah—an even larger hole to hide.

Julie R. Smith, who has a rubber hammer for sale, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.

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