The Workshop

My father's workshop smelled of pine and something electrical— the ozone ghost of a drill pushed harder than it wanted to go. He built things that almost worked: a birdhouse with a door too small, a shelf that held its books at a slant that made Hemingway lean into Dickens as if sharing a secret. He measured twice, cut once, and swore once more, and I sat on the upturned bucket and handed him the wrong screwdriver with the confidence of a surgeon's assistant who has never seen a surgery. What I learned there had nothing to do with wood: it was the permission to be not very good at something and to keep showing up with your hands and your coffee and your badly drawn plans and your belief that tomorrow's version would be closer. He was right about the shelf, in the end. Hemingway and Dickens got along fine.