I had a meltdown last week over a power tool.
The meltdown shouldn't have been surprising. For the past thirty years I've noticed that the first week in October is always the worst for me in terms of emotional troughs and existential despair. I'm sure there's a serious "waning daylight" issue going on. It always passes, with a few days and a lot of chocolate.
What triggered it was a tool that worked just as it was supposed to.
What brought me temporarily to the point of tears, however, was that I knew how to use it. Go figure.
I was in the midst of sanding some storm windows before starting to paint them. There was a week of splendid painting weather, warm and sunny and dry, and the windows, with their white paint turned a dingy, peeling grey, needed attention before the fierce travails of winter. A shop vac would be involved, of course, to vacuum the paint chips and dust. I own one. It looks like a sinister cousin of the cute Star Wars droid, R2-D2. But what had brought me to the hardware store and ultimately to the meltdown a few days later was the purchase of a palm sander and a detail sander. I bought cheap, as usual. My store brand cordless drill has worked just fine for the past several years and I saw no reason to invest large sums of money in small tools I didn't expect to use much.
But somewhere along the line in the next couple of days of sanding and painting, my ambivalence toward my new sanders turned to horror. And when my friend Judy called to say hello one morning, I hit a flashpoint and then dissolved. Doing my own windows had been the tipping point in a march toward self-sufficiency that seemed, on that bright October morning in a day that would be just a little shorter than the day before, both symbolic and lonely. I finally hung up, blowed my nose, and went outside to paint some more.
The man of my dreams, who was tied up busily painting his own storm windows and trim during this stretch of idyllic weather, did his best to point out that (1) he would love to learn how to use a sewing machine and wouldn't feel his masculinity threatened if he did, and (2) on a self-sufficiency scale, my chainsaw was a whole lot more symbolic than a detail sander.
Well, yes. He was right on both counts.
But on the other hand, I could milk the subjects of the chain saw and the cordless drill for a lot of light cocktail party banter while dressed in stilettos and chiffon and dangly earrings. There was just something about owing a detail sander that bespoke renting space in the "small engines" department of the local Tennies Ace Hardware store, pulling up a stool at the counter, and debating the finer points of lawn tractor hydraulics. The place is very, very manly. It smells like oil and metal parts and gas and testosterone. A nice place to visit, but I always feel like I've landed briefly on another planet.
I kept brooding darkly on the subject for a full week.
Then, yesterday, I found myself back in Chicago at the two-flat which had been owned by my godmother and which was about to be sold. I was there to inventory the things that remained and to help my mother pack up for moving. And so I spent part of the day in my father's work rooms in the basement, poring over the contents, looking to see if there was anything I wanted to bring home with me.
This place had not been my home. I had lived there for less than a year as a teenager before we picked up stakes and moved to an abandoned farm. I spent another year there after high school living with my aunt and my grandparents, while I worked and took a few classes and contemplated starting college full-time. I lived there again for a single summer while in college, working as a legal secretary by day and training my horse at a stable on the edge of town in the evenings.
It was always a transitory destination for me.
But my parents had lived there for the past thirty years. And a lot of stuff could build up in a man's work space in that amount of time.
I had not been able to spend much time with my father during those years. Time and distance played a part, family dynamics played another. But I knew all that time that he loved me, and that he was proud of me.
I approached the work rooms with a mixture of curiosity and salvage on my mind. There were jars upon jars of used nuts and bolts, screws and nails, drill bits and routers, washers and grinding wheels. Things were stored in coffee cans and boxes, on shelves and on the floor. My mother had been in a wheelchair for most of the past ten years, and so she wouldn't have had much to do with things in the basement. I don't know if the hoarding was a product of my father's mental confusion in his final years, or just a by-product of the privations endured as a P.O.W. during and after World War II. But he had worked as an airplane mechanic in Germany during the war, and had worked a succession of factory machine jobs in the U.S., and he would have loved the smell and the feel of the "small engines" department in the hardware store.
Here and there were things I recognized. I rounded up as many drill bits as I could find. I didn't know if they would fit my cordless drill, but I could always figure that out later. Some of them were incredibly tiny, others were enormous. There was one drill bit that was very short, but with a diameter that looked like it was made for cutting woodpecker holes in dead trees. I took a couple of hand saws, and a box of wooden kitchen matches. An antique oil can, rusted on the outside but still workable. I tipped it over and pushed on the bottom. A drop of oil squirted on to the workbench. I'll clean it up and it will sit as a sentimental decoration in my garage. If the Tin Woodsman from the Wizard of Oz ever comes for tea and feels a little stiff, I'll be ready.
High on a shelf in one of the rooms were a couple of Good Housekeeping magazines, more than twenty years old. I pulled them down, wondering what these icons of femininity were doing in such a place. They were strangely two copies of the same issue. When I read the index, I knew. I had written an article about the dog that adopted me when we were up on the farm, and this was the issue of the magazine it had run in. I looked back at myself from the pages, black and white pictures of a much younger version of me cozied up with my two young daughters and the friendly brown-and-white dog with one blue eye. It was my first national by-line, and I smiled. The magazines went into the "take with me" box.
I took a leather "Bell & Howell" camera bag, stiff with age. I have his old camera somewhere in my home. A Craftsman folding metal ruler, and a pair of wire cutters. Along the line of spending time with the man of my dreams, I've learned that Craftsman tools are something of a big deal, not only because of quality but because they come with a lifetime guarantee.
And then I found the capstone to this journey through time--my father's Craftsman electric drill. It was heavy, with a steel casing and thick rubber cord, and a tiny drill bit still in position. It looked nothing like a drill today. It had something of that modern "futuristic" look of the giant robot in the original black-and-white version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. Lifetime guarantee? Ha! I thought. If this thing ever needed parts, customer service would be sending away to a museum.
Pressed for time, I didn't try it out, but just took it instead and went upstairs to pack some china. Whether it worked or not, I didn't care. I felt somehow closer to the man who used to try to teach me how to change a tire when I was sixteen, though at the time I never committed the instructions to memory. Now I can just call AAA on my cell phone.
I plugged the drill in this morning and pulled the trigger. It roared to life with a scream much larger than its size would imply. I smiled and coiled up the cord, and placed it carefully on a shelf in my new workbench in the garage, next to the palm sander. I will be my father's daughter. And I will quit pouting over the fact that I know what a socket wrench is. Because I brought home the wrench...and all the sockets I could find too.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Into the Woods
I found the woods again tonight.
Not the woods that I own and I walk through on a regular basis, with the manicured path exactly the width of two lawn-mowers. I do that walk on average twice a day now, a convenient loop for letting off puppy steam that requires no leashes and no "doggie bags."
No, these would be the untamed woods beyond. With Lucky heeding my call more faithfully these days, I stepped confidently off the beaten path and into the woods beside us. There was a path we followed there too, but narrow and faint, with grass barely bent by the footfalls of deer at dawn and twilight rather than sheared by swirling metal blades. Even the width zigged and zagged, as branches crossed at waist height and brambles tugged at my sweatpants.
A thunderous noise greeted us, and Lucky sprang forward, the hackles on his back stiff with anticipation. What on earth could be making such a clatter, I wondered. Perhaps some deer, I thought, giving the crashing of branches and rustle of leaves. A glance upward revealed the mystery--a flock of turkeys had taken to the trees, springing from branch to branch as they landed and teetered and swayed back and forth, improbably large for their perches.
We retreated to the familiarity of the road more traveled, but stepped back into adventure a little ways on. Again we navigated a deer path, this one taking us into a stand of tall saplings with plenty of elbow room. Lucky cheerfully blundered about, then spied his first squirrel off the leash. He was a streak of greased lightning...though of course the squirrel made it forty feet up the tree before his pursuer arrived.
I caught a glint of sunlight off a tree-stand about fifty feet away, and once again we retreated. I couldn't tell if a hunter was sitting there or not, but just in case, I didn't want to spoil his efforts.
We rounded the back of the trail, and headed for home. But a few steps along the return leg, I felt the pull of curiosity again. "Hey Lucky," I called, and retraced another faint deer path up to the ridge behind the property. This was a trip back in time for me. When the children were little, we spent hours hiking back here, admiring the forest of sumac that fell away down the hill, meandering along the traces left of a snowmobile path than had been maintained before a highway and protective fencing cleaved the woods and fields. I stood in a familiar place, looking around me to get my bearings, searching for a "good" way down the hill.
But nature doesn't just abhor a vacuum, there are times it steps in and actively plants a "keep out" sign of its own. All around me, at waist height where I had once happily traveled with a pack of inquisitive children, was a forest of shrubs with wickedly sharp thorns. They looked like some type of demonic hydras of myth. Lucky snuck through, with his narrow head and thick coat navigating the sharp points. But as the light started to fade and the shadows deepen, I knew there would be no revisiting spots further down the path where I had picked violets in the woods with my children and followed streambeds through the forest of oaks trees down below.
At least not on this night. We headed back to the house as the temperatures dropped. I walked along at a leisurely pace, while Lucky tore through the tall grass on either side of the manicured path at ninety miles an hour, doing figure-eights in front of and around me in a giant herringbone stitch. So much for wearing him out. I can always dream...
One thing I'll certainly dream about, though, is going back "into the woods." It's going to take a little more daylight, and a little more daring. But somewhere along that Maginot Line of briars and vines has to be a narrow place where the deer get through and thread their way down the steep hillside to the forest floor covered with acorns. And one of these days, Lucky and I are going to find it. There are wildflowers, and memories, to be picked.
Not the woods that I own and I walk through on a regular basis, with the manicured path exactly the width of two lawn-mowers. I do that walk on average twice a day now, a convenient loop for letting off puppy steam that requires no leashes and no "doggie bags."
No, these would be the untamed woods beyond. With Lucky heeding my call more faithfully these days, I stepped confidently off the beaten path and into the woods beside us. There was a path we followed there too, but narrow and faint, with grass barely bent by the footfalls of deer at dawn and twilight rather than sheared by swirling metal blades. Even the width zigged and zagged, as branches crossed at waist height and brambles tugged at my sweatpants.
A thunderous noise greeted us, and Lucky sprang forward, the hackles on his back stiff with anticipation. What on earth could be making such a clatter, I wondered. Perhaps some deer, I thought, giving the crashing of branches and rustle of leaves. A glance upward revealed the mystery--a flock of turkeys had taken to the trees, springing from branch to branch as they landed and teetered and swayed back and forth, improbably large for their perches.
We retreated to the familiarity of the road more traveled, but stepped back into adventure a little ways on. Again we navigated a deer path, this one taking us into a stand of tall saplings with plenty of elbow room. Lucky cheerfully blundered about, then spied his first squirrel off the leash. He was a streak of greased lightning...though of course the squirrel made it forty feet up the tree before his pursuer arrived.
I caught a glint of sunlight off a tree-stand about fifty feet away, and once again we retreated. I couldn't tell if a hunter was sitting there or not, but just in case, I didn't want to spoil his efforts.
We rounded the back of the trail, and headed for home. But a few steps along the return leg, I felt the pull of curiosity again. "Hey Lucky," I called, and retraced another faint deer path up to the ridge behind the property. This was a trip back in time for me. When the children were little, we spent hours hiking back here, admiring the forest of sumac that fell away down the hill, meandering along the traces left of a snowmobile path than had been maintained before a highway and protective fencing cleaved the woods and fields. I stood in a familiar place, looking around me to get my bearings, searching for a "good" way down the hill.
But nature doesn't just abhor a vacuum, there are times it steps in and actively plants a "keep out" sign of its own. All around me, at waist height where I had once happily traveled with a pack of inquisitive children, was a forest of shrubs with wickedly sharp thorns. They looked like some type of demonic hydras of myth. Lucky snuck through, with his narrow head and thick coat navigating the sharp points. But as the light started to fade and the shadows deepen, I knew there would be no revisiting spots further down the path where I had picked violets in the woods with my children and followed streambeds through the forest of oaks trees down below.
At least not on this night. We headed back to the house as the temperatures dropped. I walked along at a leisurely pace, while Lucky tore through the tall grass on either side of the manicured path at ninety miles an hour, doing figure-eights in front of and around me in a giant herringbone stitch. So much for wearing him out. I can always dream...
One thing I'll certainly dream about, though, is going back "into the woods." It's going to take a little more daylight, and a little more daring. But somewhere along that Maginot Line of briars and vines has to be a narrow place where the deer get through and thread their way down the steep hillside to the forest floor covered with acorns. And one of these days, Lucky and I are going to find it. There are wildflowers, and memories, to be picked.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The Hair Sacrifice
I went and got the “new baby haircut” the other day.
No, I don’t have a baby. The haircut was for me. But it was just the latest in a series of “cave-ins” to adapt to the new reality of being a single mother to a new puppy.
I haven’t been prone to too many radical changes in hair styles over the years. I’ve gone from short to a little longer, or a little shorter, or from shoulder length to a little shorter. Hair color has been an entirely different story. But actual, dramatic cleaving of hair-length has been reserved for some truly life-altering events.
When my oldest daughter was born twenty-odd years ago, I’d had long hair a few inches past my shoulders. I saw no reason to change that look…until she was six months old and started pulling herself up to a sitting position by seizing handfuls of my brunette locks. Off I went to the salon, and got a short and shaggy “do” that lasted many years, give or take an inch or two when the weather turned cold.
A decade and a half later, I had a toddler, a new puppy, and a marriage finally showing its stress fractures. I wanted to streamline. That, and it was summer, and I was tired of brushing sweaty hair out of my eyes whenever I bent over to pick up the kid or the dog. Off to the salon I went again, and came home with a short “pixie” cut that left the longest hair on my head about an inch and a half long. It was very edgy and “in your face,” with a touch of Joan of Arc style. Hers might have been longer.
My husband’s office was just a few miles away in town, and he was in the habit of coming home for lunch. He walked into the kitchen that day as I was washing dishes at the sink, and I could tell by his footsteps pacing behind me that he was stunned and cautiously circling what clearly was an unfamiliar and unpredictable entity. Had I come home with my head shaved, I don’t think he would have been more startled. Or wary.
That look lasted a few years, until I decided I was done with the hassle of wearing my contact lenses and went back to a softer silhouette to offset my glasses.
Fast forward to the present. I’ve been enjoying having longer hair once again, even if it meant spending extra time with the blow dryer and pulling out the hot rollers every other day. The payoff was great. I walked past my certain fella a few months ago while we were watching a DVD, to put the dinner plates in the kitchen. It was summer, and I was in some kind of fluttery sundress. When I walked back into the TV room he had a dazed smile on his face.
“What?” I asked. “Oh,” he replied. “I was just looking at you…with the dress…and the long hair…WOW.”
Trust me, to give up the long hair right now after a moment like that was asking a lot.
But four weeks with Lucky has brought out my practical, compromising side with a vengeance. In military parlance, it’s called “capitulation.” Or “surrender.” I’ve made peace with working at the kitchen counter on my laptop via a new wireless router that took me five days to install. I’ve brought back the custom-made, matches-the-wood-railings baby gate for the top of the main stairs that had been retired from use fifteen years ago when my youngest child learned to safely navigate stairs. I’ve sacrificed my fake bunny-fur bedroom slippers as decoys for my red suede high heels, and moved the cat’s food and water to a high shelf in the basement so that he can dine unmolested.
And for the foreseeable future, since this pup’s teething stage closely resembles a canine version of “Pac-Man,” to keep him from gnawing the furniture (or the cat) while I’m out of the room, I bring him with me into the bathroom. For showers, makeup, hair, the whole nine yards. All that’s needed is to toss his favorite squeaky rubber chicken or squeaky fluffy bone on to the bathmat two feet ahead of him, and he pounces in like a coyote on a fieldmouse, to then be held mournfully captive until I’m ready to face the world and say “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.”
But after four weeks of puppy howls (at first) while I showered, and then baleful puppy stares while I worked my magic with blow dryer and hot rollers, I gave up on the hair. Okay, that and the fact that while I stood there putting the rollers in and trying not to burn my fingers, he liked to try to lick the moisturizer off my ankles. Really, what woman my age even uses hot rollers, I asked myself as I drove off to the salon with steely determination yet again. I emerged several hours later with a new color, a new set of highlights, and a “wash and go” short style that should free up more time in the morning to toss a tennis ball down the driveway in a fruitless quest to wear this little guy out. What I spent would have bought a lot of Milkbones. When you’re a new mother, you do what you gotta do.
By the way, Lucky got his first official bath a few days ago. I’d bought him his very own bottle of two-in-one shampoo plus conditioner, and when he’d dried off, I noticed that his fur was looking a little more curly, and a little longer. No doubt about it, a lustrous glossy coat is starting to come in. There are the beginnings of “feathers” on the back of his hind legs, his tail is looking fuller when he wags it, and the fur on his back is starting to get some serious wave action.
In another six months, I’m pretty sure his hair will be longer than mine. Whoever said motherhood was fair?
No, I don’t have a baby. The haircut was for me. But it was just the latest in a series of “cave-ins” to adapt to the new reality of being a single mother to a new puppy.
I haven’t been prone to too many radical changes in hair styles over the years. I’ve gone from short to a little longer, or a little shorter, or from shoulder length to a little shorter. Hair color has been an entirely different story. But actual, dramatic cleaving of hair-length has been reserved for some truly life-altering events.
When my oldest daughter was born twenty-odd years ago, I’d had long hair a few inches past my shoulders. I saw no reason to change that look…until she was six months old and started pulling herself up to a sitting position by seizing handfuls of my brunette locks. Off I went to the salon, and got a short and shaggy “do” that lasted many years, give or take an inch or two when the weather turned cold.
A decade and a half later, I had a toddler, a new puppy, and a marriage finally showing its stress fractures. I wanted to streamline. That, and it was summer, and I was tired of brushing sweaty hair out of my eyes whenever I bent over to pick up the kid or the dog. Off to the salon I went again, and came home with a short “pixie” cut that left the longest hair on my head about an inch and a half long. It was very edgy and “in your face,” with a touch of Joan of Arc style. Hers might have been longer.
My husband’s office was just a few miles away in town, and he was in the habit of coming home for lunch. He walked into the kitchen that day as I was washing dishes at the sink, and I could tell by his footsteps pacing behind me that he was stunned and cautiously circling what clearly was an unfamiliar and unpredictable entity. Had I come home with my head shaved, I don’t think he would have been more startled. Or wary.
That look lasted a few years, until I decided I was done with the hassle of wearing my contact lenses and went back to a softer silhouette to offset my glasses.
Fast forward to the present. I’ve been enjoying having longer hair once again, even if it meant spending extra time with the blow dryer and pulling out the hot rollers every other day. The payoff was great. I walked past my certain fella a few months ago while we were watching a DVD, to put the dinner plates in the kitchen. It was summer, and I was in some kind of fluttery sundress. When I walked back into the TV room he had a dazed smile on his face.
“What?” I asked. “Oh,” he replied. “I was just looking at you…with the dress…and the long hair…WOW.”
Trust me, to give up the long hair right now after a moment like that was asking a lot.
But four weeks with Lucky has brought out my practical, compromising side with a vengeance. In military parlance, it’s called “capitulation.” Or “surrender.” I’ve made peace with working at the kitchen counter on my laptop via a new wireless router that took me five days to install. I’ve brought back the custom-made, matches-the-wood-railings baby gate for the top of the main stairs that had been retired from use fifteen years ago when my youngest child learned to safely navigate stairs. I’ve sacrificed my fake bunny-fur bedroom slippers as decoys for my red suede high heels, and moved the cat’s food and water to a high shelf in the basement so that he can dine unmolested.
And for the foreseeable future, since this pup’s teething stage closely resembles a canine version of “Pac-Man,” to keep him from gnawing the furniture (or the cat) while I’m out of the room, I bring him with me into the bathroom. For showers, makeup, hair, the whole nine yards. All that’s needed is to toss his favorite squeaky rubber chicken or squeaky fluffy bone on to the bathmat two feet ahead of him, and he pounces in like a coyote on a fieldmouse, to then be held mournfully captive until I’m ready to face the world and say “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.”
But after four weeks of puppy howls (at first) while I showered, and then baleful puppy stares while I worked my magic with blow dryer and hot rollers, I gave up on the hair. Okay, that and the fact that while I stood there putting the rollers in and trying not to burn my fingers, he liked to try to lick the moisturizer off my ankles. Really, what woman my age even uses hot rollers, I asked myself as I drove off to the salon with steely determination yet again. I emerged several hours later with a new color, a new set of highlights, and a “wash and go” short style that should free up more time in the morning to toss a tennis ball down the driveway in a fruitless quest to wear this little guy out. What I spent would have bought a lot of Milkbones. When you’re a new mother, you do what you gotta do.
By the way, Lucky got his first official bath a few days ago. I’d bought him his very own bottle of two-in-one shampoo plus conditioner, and when he’d dried off, I noticed that his fur was looking a little more curly, and a little longer. No doubt about it, a lustrous glossy coat is starting to come in. There are the beginnings of “feathers” on the back of his hind legs, his tail is looking fuller when he wags it, and the fur on his back is starting to get some serious wave action.
In another six months, I’m pretty sure his hair will be longer than mine. Whoever said motherhood was fair?
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