On the otherwise ivory-cream walls, rough white splotches of dried spackle have glared at me for a year as I have climbed the stairs several times a day, easily a thousand trips, with the chaotic white patches accusing me of not sanding them out and painting them over to blend with the smooth cream, not helping them fit it, bringing them into pleasing uniformity.   I don’t care.  Sitting on the toilet seat lid, Dad spread spackle on the screw-head holes and sheetrock seam, in the bathroom with the new (and unpainted) door.  He had asked me for the spackle and a puddy knife and sanding blocks: “this is something I can do.”  I knew he could do it, and I also knew I would have to redo it, not because I am better than he is at plastering walls, but because his unsteady hands and blurred eyes could not help but leave the job needing to be finished or repaired, or both.  But who am I to tell my father not to do something he wants to do and believes he can do and probably can do quite well?  He asked me to bring in the shop vac so he could vacuum the dried spackle dust after he sanded.  I brought in the vacuum and sanded and cleaned up.  He asked to me bring in the paint, and a roller pan, and new roller, so he could roll paint on the wall.  “I think we might need to plaster a bit more,” I suggested, in the third person, carefully, but he agreed and smeared on a second application, “and that maybe before we roll the walls, we brush on some paint over the plaster, as a primer.”  Okay, he said.  The first and second paint cans I opened found hardened, cracked paint.  “It’s probably been sitting there for 25 years,” Dad chuckled.  In the third can, the paint was as thick as buttery mashed potatoes, and much heavier, but uncongealed and stirrable.  The splotches on the walls above the stair lift have now been sanded smooth and painted over, and the wall above the stair lift is again its harmonious creamy self, without blemish.  And the bathroom is painted, or at least primed.  Another coat may hide the scars in the bathroom wall, without rolling, and I hope Dad will not, in fact, try to roll paint on the walls.  He believes the old paint has faded, and the new paint will not match.  I am not looking forward to cleaning up after that paint job.  But he wants to do that job, and this is his house, and who am I to tell him no?