Extreme Makeover Home Edition-Maynard: The bus moves

To begin with, it was cold. Bright and sunny, but still, cold. The windchill was around 15-18 degrees. The crowd was cold. The crew was cold. I have no doubt Ty was cold. The crowd was electric. People were there to celebrate the art of the possible. I don’t believe for a minute that we had anything close to 5,000 people there. Maybe 1,500. Two grand, tops. However, everyone was cold, and there were still a lot of people.

There were repeated shots of the limo, lots and lots and lots of chants of “move that bus” (it was a big bus).

I only saw a few portapotties for the assembled crowd (insert thankfulness for having my own facilities nearby). Cami and Harry had a good time barking at the crowd. P gave hot cocoa to a couple of the crew who were camped out at the t-shirt tent that was on the other side of our back yard fence. They were appreciative, I’m sure (the crew, not the t-shirts).

A few minutes before 3:00pm, the bus honked 5 times, which was the signal that the limo was in range. Sure enough, the Giunta’s soon appeared in a big, black limousine. At 3:20, the bus moved on command. Paul Giunta finally came home, entering his new house on Elm Court for the first time. We knew this was coming. We had all been waiting in the winter air, some for hours, just to see this event. Still, the simple truth was powerful. A father and husband was returning home to stay for the first time in two years. You couldn’t help but be moved. When Paul and Renee last lived on Elm Court together, P and I lived in Watertown.. We hadn’t even considered moving to Maynard yet. Renee and Paul were simply looking forward to the birth of their third child, and couldn’t imagine how their life would be changed, for the worse, and finally for the better, starting tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow. ABC isn’t done taking the “beauty shots” of the house yet, and believe it or not, the Giunta family will be spending tonight in a hotel. They formally move in sometime tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, the crew will stay on site doing cleanup and finishing details until Tuesday. Then, finally, we get our neighborhood back. Another neighbor and friend acerbically calls this “Extreme Takeover”. It might sound ungenerous, but you know something? He’s not entirely wrong, either. For a week, life has been different, and nobody was asked if it was ok with us beforehand. Routines were hijacked. Traffic patterns were drastically changed. A sleepy, bucolic little town was turned into a noisy, overly lit, round-the-clock construction zone/television set. Feel free to give me a hard time about saying that, but you can’t deny the essential truth. It was a hassle.

But it’s still worth it. This is an absolute good. A family is reunited in a beautiful new home. The kids get their dad back. A wife and mother gets to raise her family now with her husband by her side. And most importantly, a man who has been through an unimaginable hell gets to come home. So many of us take the simple stuff for granted. Paul Giunta can be home now, where he belongs. Very much like the hokey pokey, that’s what it’s all about.

Oh, I’ve been asked when the show will air. I’ve been told the airdate is May 11.