I can see it clear
as a blue-sky day all of these years later.
I can hear the whine and rip of the table saw tearing through a piece of
lumber. I can still see his faded,
ragged, and torn red flannel. More than
anything I can see the indiscreet smile on his face. I can hear the muffled sounds of Credence
Clearwater Revival wheezing from the old 1980’s battery operated boom box with
an old wire hanger where the antenna used to be. His old cassette tape sounding worn and
tired. I can hear the sound of the
heater buzzing in the corner on a cold Texas winter night. As I stepped into that two-car garage I could
barely stand the smell permeating the entire space. The oil based lacquer, the polyurethane
finish. I still remember 20+ years
later the man standing there covered in sawdust, lost in a virtual snowstorm of
wooden dust.
Countless times I
ventured into that garage to grab my skateboard, my surfboard, or just pass
through to the friends waiting in the driveway.
I don’t remember a time that he didn’t stop me and try to grab a moment
of my attention. His teenage son. Too preoccupied to realize how incredibly valuable
those mere moments would be half a lifetime later. I rarely took the time to listen, much less
spend a few hours with him learning a craft that has become so lost in the generations
to follow. Watching dad toil his time
away seemed so senseless and boring. Dad
would spend hours in his garage alone.
No son(s) to pass his craft onto.
The young bravado and arrogance was far too imposing for me to allow a
few hours doing something as monotonous and boring as woodwork. Behind my rolling eyes as I ignored his
requests for help, time together, or simply a quick conversation lay an
attitude for which I still cannot wrap my mind around. How could dad spend so long picking through
lumber, looking at the grain, smelling the wood, and sighting along its axis? My ignorance was only superseded by my
arrogance. Who had time to hang out with
their “old man” in his garage doing stupid woodworking projects that were so
useless?
The irony isn’t lost
on me today. I’m about the age dad was
when many of these memories were formed.
I remember his hair was the color that mine is today. Brown giving way and surrendering to the gray
that will take us into the second half of this life. Not all that long ago, out of nowhere, a
blind ambition surfaced to build something with my hands. Not from metal, as I spent a long time
working with metal, fabricating, and welding, but with something that grew from
our earth, was part of the mountains and trees I’ve come to love in a life
spent in the wild and high places across this globe. I wanted to pick up something beautiful and
turn it into something useful. I wanted
to pick up a piece of wood and make it into something worth remembering. Suddenly I was interested in the character of
a piece of lumber. The smell of a freshly
sanded, milled, planed, or jointed piece of wood simply fills my olfactory
senses. The character in the grains can
captivate my attention for what seems like hours. My spare time and what little money I have seems
to go to acquiring the tools I so blatantly ignored him trying to educate me
on. I find myself in the garage picking
endlessly through repurposed lumber, looking for the best piece. I search woodworking magazines for tips. If my friends and colleagues viewed my YouTube
history they’d probably get a good laugh from the playlist(s).
Dad learned the
craft from his dad and he tried desperately to pass the baton and show me a
thing or two and yet I was too caught up in the life I thought was
endless. Only after a series of strokes,
damage to my head that very well could be irreparable, do I look back with eyes
full of tears wishing I could have one of those moments back. I find as my own life crosses the threshold
to “midlife”, and I face the medical challenges I never saw coming, that I don’t
really regret much. I’ve had an amazing
life full of adventures from the Himalayas, the mountains of Alaska, and the
beaches of Hawaii and California. And
yet what I long for most are those simple moments with the ones I love. The missed opportunities. The times wasted chasing the things I’d only
come to find later in life really meant so little in the end.
All these years
later I’d find solace and comfort in the very place I passed by and left him
standing there alone all those years ago.
If just I could be the friend in the driveway…grab that young me and
slap the ever loving shit out of him and tell him to get back in there and take
the time, invest the time, and take the torch and run with it. What I’d give for an hour in that
garage. I find myself doing projects now
in the medium he has loved for most of his life, craving his help, his advice,
his simple tricks and most of all….the priceless gift of the time spent with
the man I’ve come to admire, look up to, and for whom I try every day to live
up to. Little did I know back then that
the short moments, the tiniest bit of time, could shape so much and would
become an irreplaceable commodity somewhere down the line. How could I ever know that I’d find myself
all but begging my own kids (at the ages I was back then) to lend me a hand
(that I don’t technically need) on the next wood project, to help hold a board
as I cut simply hoping I could steal a moment of their time. To sit with me and sand an old board into
something beautiful.
Dad is still here
and yet I rarely spend the time he deserves with him. He’s a thousand miles away now. One of the hardest decisions I ever made (or
will) was to move my family to a better life high in the Colorado Rockies and
to this day he’s my biggest supporter of the struggle, the decision, and he
lives vicariously through my adventures.
Little does he know I push myself on these adventures because I know he
lives a little each day through the photos, videos, and stories I write about,
share with him, etc. I hope one day he
realizes he fuels my drive and keeps me going when most of the world would
understand if I hung up my hat and simply sat on the porch and enjoyed the days
I’m left with. I hope he knows how
important the few possessions I have that were crafted by his hand are to
me. The few projects where I took the
time out to help him with are now things for which I cannot imagine NOT having
in my home. Should my house catch fire,
and knowing my kids were safe, I’d run back into this blazing home simply to
retrieve those “things” because to me they are more important than any other
“thing” within these walls. I’d risk it
all to save those things where I know we shared the time, where I know he
coached me through the cuts, our hands together formed the worthless planks
into something that would come to mean so much.
I can only imagine the comical look on the faces of the bystanders as
some crazy lunatic ran back into his house for a TV stand his dad made during
his senior year in high school, the bookcase they made together, or the candle
holder they made together from a piece of Aspen during one of dads visits
shortly after we moved here. Those
simple little things are beyond monetary value and are simply and without
question priceless to me. They represent
the moments where I took the time to invest in the time that would soon fade
away. Time with a man I’d come to
appreciate beyond words half a lifetime later.
These moments I now spend alone in a garage looking at the grain, hoping
that my son and daughter will someday see the value in time and stop for a
moment and NOT run against the grain. I
love you pops! I’d give it all back to
have an hour in the garage with you!
