When I was a kid, my grandmother set up a makeshift studio for me in her backyard in Berkeley. She tacked up a piece of black roofing paper on the fence and gave me an enameled tray to use as a palette. She offered me brushes, but I liked to use my fingers. I remember the feel of smearing the bright paints across the rough surface of the paper. I never wanted to paint pictures of people or flowers or houses; I just loved sweeping different colors across the black background, as vivid and contrasting as possible.

Now I kept imagining the ocean in the Adrienne Rich poem. I was taken with the idea of trying to paint it.

Joan told me there were acrylic paints in the studio, left over from the last art class she had taught at the local community center. There was a roll of roofing paper, too, she said, stashed in the gardening shed. She still used it for classes because it was so cheap, and it held the paint well.

I went to the studio first, where I opened the cabinets to hunt for the paints. I found brushes and palette knives, trays with dried paint in the corners, jars of rubber cement and matte medium. I found a heavy, rectangular leather case with the word Rolleiflex stamped across the top, and realized this must be Joan’s camera. At the very back of the cabinet was a jumble of plastic bottles and squeeze tubes filled with acrylic paint. I pulled them out and lined them up on the counter: ultramarine blue, raw umber, alizarin crimson, chrome yellow, titanium white, mars black. The bottles were covered in multicolored smudges and fingerprints.

I put away the stuff I didn’t need, but kept out the camera to show Joan. Then I went to the shed, where I found the roll of tar paper wedged into a back corner. It was about three feet wide and seemed to weigh a million pounds. Once I maneuvered it outside, I found it was easier to roll it over the ground like a log than to carry it. I was rolling it into the studio when Joan called me from the deck.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw her waving the house cordless phone at me. “Your dad’s on the phone!” she called.

I dusted off my hands—the paper still smelled a bit like asphalt—and went up the stairs to the deck. Joan handed me the phone and went back inside, while I sat down on the lounger. “Hi, Dad,” I said.

He didn’t have cell reception at the colony, so every Sunday he would go to the main lodge and call using their landline.

“Hi,” he said. “How are things?”

“They’re fine. How are you?”

“Same. I’m making progress. Are you still watching my dad’s astronomy lectures?”