Building my cabin two decades after my father and I last built a home together.
I wanted to tell the story of how my father taught me to use the level on the skinny side of a two by four. How he told me to watch the nail as I swung, not the hammer. How the screw rolls easier with a slide of soap and slow bursts of twisting. What about the way a wall sounds “not ripe” where a stud lurks behind the drywall? I look about my cabin walls and floor proud of the tongue and groove in perfect pitch and warp. I wanted a happy history. I wanted the father son story to be the foundation of my handy work.
My dad was a contractor. I worshipped him like a god made from clay and wood. The myth and facts about my dad swim side by side. The truth dives deep somewhere between the two. Here are some facts about my training through our fifteen years of building: When a foundation needed to be dug, I dug. When concrete blocks needed to be moved, I moved. When sawdust and nails needed sweeping, I swept. My memory of my father is one of him standing above me as I bent into the sandy wall of a trench. The same wall kept caving in as I dug, as he laughed. Once as a half joke he bought a shovel for me and monogrammed it with my name on the metal face. He threw the shovel down into the pit and chuckled: “Now Toby (My “slave” name) I want to see you wear your name right off that g-d blade.” Within half a year I wore the shovel’s edge away by two inches with the digging. And my name was scraped off and smoothed away by so much dirt.
The facts of the heart remain. He knew little of the beauty of building and manifesting soulful design. He knew sweat and equity. I learned the angles and the drives by watching the other workmen. I learned from books and even TV shows on building. Mostly I learned by myself. I learned with years of honing skills and shovel loads of mis-cuts, bent heads and broken glass. I learned by doing, by surpassing my father in everything but money wrung out of blind nailed walls.
He could be a smiling brute who got his kicks out of standing above me in so many poses. He could also be affectionate and unafraid of hard work. When I look at my cabin, knotted wood gracing the walls and bolting across the ceiling, when I run my fingers over glazing and the strong backs of thick beams, when I sit back and contemplate the deep beauty I’ve made from a shallow bank account, I remind myself. “I made this. With the grace of the Beloved I did this!”
For decades I told the misty eyed story of my father’s gnarled hands gently guiding mine on the hammer and saw handle. But his hands were used only for himself. It’s the gift of my hands that made my world. A myth never makes anything by itself. A myth builds hope and happiness and perhaps some innate knowledge. Yet it’s the years of mistakes, broken projects and lucky hits that made this cabin new again. All the history was tangled in a story that was a comfort. But now my own dream fashions a living structure, itself fashioned together with visions from the earth. All of it cut smart and measured twice with prayers, and even gratitude for those years behind the shovel. This cabin is my hands, worn off in the smoothing.
I wanted to tell the story of how my father taught me to use the level on the skinny side of a two by four. How he told me to watch the nail as I swung, not the hammer. How the screw rolls easier with a slide of soap and slow bursts of twisting. What about the way a wall sounds “not ripe” where a stud lurks behind the drywall? I look about my cabin walls and floor proud of the tongue and groove in perfect pitch and warp. I wanted a happy history. I wanted the father son story to be the foundation of my handy work.
My dad was a contractor. I worshipped him like a god made from clay and wood. The myth and facts about my dad swim side by side. The truth dives deep somewhere between the two. Here are some facts about my training through our fifteen years of building: When a foundation needed to be dug, I dug. When concrete blocks needed to be moved, I moved. When sawdust and nails needed sweeping, I swept. My memory of my father is one of him standing above me as I bent into the sandy wall of a trench. The same wall kept caving in as I dug, as he laughed. Once as a half joke he bought a shovel for me and monogrammed it with my name on the metal face. He threw the shovel down into the pit and chuckled: “Now Toby (My “slave” name) I want to see you wear your name right off that g-d blade.” Within half a year I wore the shovel’s edge away by two inches with the digging. And my name was scraped off and smoothed away by so much dirt.
The facts of the heart remain. He knew little of the beauty of building and manifesting soulful design. He knew sweat and equity. I learned the angles and the drives by watching the other workmen. I learned from books and even TV shows on building. Mostly I learned by myself. I learned with years of honing skills and shovel loads of mis-cuts, bent heads and broken glass. I learned by doing, by surpassing my father in everything but money wrung out of blind nailed walls.
He could be a smiling brute who got his kicks out of standing above me in so many poses. He could also be affectionate and unafraid of hard work. When I look at my cabin, knotted wood gracing the walls and bolting across the ceiling, when I run my fingers over glazing and the strong backs of thick beams, when I sit back and contemplate the deep beauty I’ve made from a shallow bank account, I remind myself. “I made this. With the grace of the Beloved I did this!”
For decades I told the misty eyed story of my father’s gnarled hands gently guiding mine on the hammer and saw handle. But his hands were used only for himself. It’s the gift of my hands that made my world. A myth never makes anything by itself. A myth builds hope and happiness and perhaps some innate knowledge. Yet it’s the years of mistakes, broken projects and lucky hits that made this cabin new again. All the history was tangled in a story that was a comfort. But now my own dream fashions a living structure, itself fashioned together with visions from the earth. All of it cut smart and measured twice with prayers, and even gratitude for those years behind the shovel. This cabin is my hands, worn off in the smoothing.
I have lived richly on a few deep inner journeys and his trinkets of kindness. That is the power of myth. It is a tree that grows from seeds of small gifts. The tree becomes the beam, which holds the home. The tree becomes something more. My father did many small kindnesses in his ways. The myth of my father being so wise and rich was once fuel to teach myself how to live, how to build my own beauty, how to do more than survive. My father was neither good nor bad. Just a mere human after all. I care for the man who will never speak to me again on earth. I love the man. . Whether it’s a myth or not, I loved his hands, bloody and callused with work. I loved his arm on my shoulder as we leave our frames and foundations at twilight. I loved how happy we were from a good day of sweat, looking forward to some rest and laughter in our fine home made of wood, driven together with nails.
Now I especially love my adult truths remembered in my cabin. I celebrate the occasional silence between the visions and the nightmares. This life is my myth now. My truth. It is something I build one board at a time, something I finish and smooth with the kindness of my own hands.
Rick
