Confessions of an Unhandy Man

It’s quickly becoming the time of year when people begin thinking of elaborate, meaningful, expensive gifts that they can give another person. The spirit of love, generosity, and gratitude guides us towards video game systems, cheeky coffee mugs, early editions of favorite books, or Cosby sweaters given ironically to humorless, unappreciative recipients. Some gifts are simple and provide endless joy, like a pair of yellow Spiderman saucer sleds given to two little boys. Some are more elaborate and involve weekends away with people we love.

When I was a boy, my mother bought a junior carpenter’s workbench for me as a gift. It came with adorably kid-sized tools that, while nominally functional, were not meant for serious work. I set the workbench up in my bedroom, eagerly planning the wondrous items I’d produce with its limitless capacity. The arrhythmic, staccato tapping of my tiny hammer, coupled with the ineffective and interminable sawing generated by the miniature, plastic-handled saw thwarted my efforts. Toolboxes became unbalanced, miniature footstools. Birdhouses became horrifying lessons in the fragility of life. Thumbs were smashed and sawdust covered my low-pile bedroom carpeting in a dusting of frustration.

It was at that point, well before I had even been on this Earth for a decade, that I knew I wasn't much of a handyman. That recognition didn't stop me from trying to build new and more unsafe creations.

In high school, I went on a mission trip to Matamoros, where part of my service involved helping to frame and sheet-rock the walls of an interior room. Between the uneven cuts of wood and hammer dents in the gypsum, it was determined that I was better suited to paint the walls of the entryway. It didn't take long for my joyful carelessness to allow thick, grey enamel paint to stick in my hair and on the floor. I didn't care. I was productive and handy. I was doing the Lord's work. I was Michelangelo, by way of Tarzan, and this was my Sistine Chapel. 

Faced with the task of painting the ceiling without a ladder, I carefully arranged a set of folding chairs in just such a way that I could use them as scaffolding to reach the high corners, so long as I kept one hand on the trusses above. Eventually, It got to the point where I couldn’t safely reach all parts of the ceiling, so I devised a plan to dangle from a nearby truss, paint the remaining spots quickly while I had paint in the bristles, and drop to the ground in the knowledge that I had outsmarted my limitations. At least that’s the way it was supposed to go in my head.

My cunning plan didn’t take into account the amount of brushstrokes it would take to cover the bare spot, nor how long I could keep my hand gripped on the rough, steel truss supports. As the weight of my body transferred squarely into my left palm, I felt each burr and splinter of steel grind themselves in deeply, no doubt causing a horrifying infection. Frantically, I slashed the brush against the ceiling. Hasty strokes forced the brush to drip more of the paint down to my hand, instead of onto the ceiling and I lost my grip on its handle. As I dropped to the ground, the director of the mission came around the corner to see the mess I had made of the scene. Tiny, grey globs of paint were all over the floor, my face, and a nearby window. As his face exhibited a colossal battle between explosive anger and cultivated patience, he politely asked if I'd rather sweep the floors in a different part of the building.

My technical skill was on display once again in college, when my truck’s battery seemed to be on the verge of failure. One friend told me to pour a can of coke over the corroded terminals, which I thought sounded patently idiotic. Another friend suggested simply buying a new battery, but I knew I could revivify the old one. My brother, who had come up to visit for the day, suggested I clean the terminals with a steel brush. There are specialized tools for that task, but I discovered a much cheaper alternative in a long lump of steel wool. 

Chandler took to the task of cleaning one terminal and I thought it would be efficient and helpful to grab the other end of the steel wool and clean the other terminal simultaneously. A few seconds later, his girlfriend alerted us that smoke was rising from front of the battery. I looked down, saw glowing, burning steel, and suddenly remembered everything I knew about electrical conductivity. Thankfully, that task only took a few seconds and I intelligently removed my end from the terminal as my brother began to justifiably panic in a storm of profanity and swatting at sparks on his jeans.

In my adult years, the evidence against me continues to pile up. A cat condo emerged from a former bunk bed frame, so overbuilt and unnecessarily heavy that it was more functional as monument to my ineptitude than it was a functional piece of pet furniture. Decks were installed, but somehow tilted and creaked if one's weight was transferred to a precise spot. A laptop computer was rendered useless by futzing around with it in the process of trying to clean it. Pool leaks were patched with enough silicone sealant to make Pamela Anderson jealous and zip ties were lasting, proud solutions to problems better solved by spending $15 at the hardware store. Sometimes, I am able to outsmart my limitations, sometimes not.

Today is my mother's 61st birthday and I love her very much, even if she loves Barry Manilow and radishes. Even if my personal decision making abilities are vexing and I don't see her as often as she'd like, I'm sure she loves me too. She was about the age I am now when she bought that junior carpenter’s workbench for me. While it's hard to wrap my head around that chronological fact, it's even harder to remember all the gifts she bought me over the years and if any of them were as educational and character building as that one.

The workbench, ignoring its role as the scene of my earliest mechanical failings, was a fine gift and I am grateful to my mother for purchasing it, even a quarter of a century later. The gift itself wasn't what was important, though. It was a chunky, ugly contraption made of particle board that warped and cracked when shifted around. What was important were the traits that the gift awakened and nurtured in me.

In spite of a hundred sliced thumbs, scuffed knuckles, and defeated trips to the hardware store, I still believe that I'm capable of building and repairing items. In spite of mountainous evidence to the contrary, I still believe that I can succeed if I try to solve the problem in a different and more inventive way. That sense of curiosity and optimism, given by my mother through a junior carpenter’s workbench, is the kind of gift we should all look to give to our loved ones this holiday season.

In between the Scylla and Charybdis of shallow consumerism and thoughtless obligation, perhaps we might stop and contemplate what traits our gifts might nurture in the minds of their intended recipients. There's nothing wrong with a shiny toy that inspires flights of imagination. There's nothing wrong with a sweet stocking stuffer that imbues a temporary sense of satisfaction and well-being. Somewhere amongst those items, there's also room for a gift, like a junior carpenter's workbench, that might awaken something grand and lasting.

Happy Birthday, Mom. Thanks for all the gifts and kindness over the years. Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels to the rest of you out there.

Veterans, Prairies, and Much Needed Vacations

Here in my home office, I have a series of random items hanging on the wall. They're collected from experiences I've had or items I've been given over the years. I have a heavy, wooden tennis racket from the 70's that was purchased at a garage sale to satisfy the room's required kitsch factor. I have a few of my youngest daughter's drawings posted to give her confidence and pride in her abilities.

My M.A.diploma, which sits in a plain black frame, simultaneously reminds me of both personal successes and bittersweet missteps. There's also a framed group photo of my maternal grandfather's Army company before they shipped off to fight in World War II. Near it is a frame displaying his medals and patches from his time as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. He's been gone for well over a decade now, but echoes remain in my mind and in the world around me.

My recollections of my grandfather aren't well-suited to the kinds of proud, lionizing rhetoric I'll read or hear about today. He was a retired, confused man by the time I knew him and most of his days were spent drinking, reflecting, shooting gophers from his back porch, or underlining certain phrases in copies of National Geographic and the Reader's Digest.

It's hard to imagine him as a young man dropping from the sky, heralding the death of Axis soldiers in Italy and the Netherlands. In a box in my office, I have his war-time Gideon Bible. It's beaten, aged, and has the names and apartment numbers of women he knew, in the biblical sense, while fighting in Italy. He lived a long and complicated life, filled with contradictions, defeats, and victories.

Yet, his medals rest in their display case on my wall, reminding me that he overcame a struggle that required far more bravery than I've ever had to muster for anything. So, on a day like today where we're meant to honor all who served our country in the military, I think of his service and how his extraordinarily fortunate survival is directly responsible for my existence, not only as a free American, but also as a human being.

As is usual, I try spend a bit of time before most holidays to reflect upon what the holiday means to society, what it means to me, and how divergent those meanings might be. I don't know if most people do this, but I suspect that they don't. I try to believe the best about the people around me, so I'd like to believe that  we're all constantly trying to align our perceptions of the present with our interpretations of the past. It just so happens that a holiday provides a more definite window of opportunity through which we can defenestrate our ponderings.

My ponderings took me to the internet, to find out the history of the holiday. As it happens, the Congressional Representative responsible for the bill that created our modern version of Veterans Day hailed from Emporia, Kansas. I say this because I drove through Emporia twice this weekend on my way to an Iron & Wine concert in Kansas City. Aside from being the home of a few famous people like R. Lee Ermey and Coach Dean Smith, as well as a small college, Emporia also calls itself the "Front Porch to the Flint Hills."

 The Flint Hills of Kansas. I don't see a front porch. Or much of anything.

As I drove through the Flint Hills, both coming and going from Kansas City, I was stunned by the starkness of the landscape. The absence of trees or traces of humanity made the land seem otherworldly, as if it were some sort of moonscape image transmitted by a NASA rover, ten million miles away from home. I've seen this landscape before, in the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County, just west of my hometown. I'm sure I was more focused on the bison or whomever was with me in the car at the time to see the beauty of this part of the country.

Yet here it was, still and silent outside the window of my fleeting automobile, appearing to have been unspoiled by the avaricious persistence of certain kinds of pioneers. When I returned to my house, I read more about the Flint Hills. Geologically, they're beyond ancient. They're largely unspoiled because the land is unsuitable for farming, though some small patches of agriculture were present as I drove through. 

More importantly, the Flint Hills and the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve are worth beholding because they've survived. Most of the Great Plains looked this way when settlers arrived here with their plows. Natural grassfires would scorch the landscape, burning nearly a third of it every year. More than that, the massive fires also gave the land the possibility to grow and flourish. In that austere beauty, a survivor's narrative appeared. Despite the fact that an abysmal interstate bisects the land, it persists and resists. It would seem that destruction, survival, and revivification were literally infused into the grass and soil.

It is a veteran of its own great war and it bears its own scars to prove its courage. So little of it remains, much like the ever-decreasing number of beings that are veterans of my grandfather's war. We take time to memorialize their service in eternal granite, knowing that it was a brave and stunning decision to put themselves in harm's way. We've taken efforts to set aside tracts of land as memorials or open-air cathedrals celebrating the survival and resurrection of a threatened place. We honor the inimitable beauty of their service and their survival.

Time will carry us into the future and subsequent generations will undoubtedly lose any sort of personal connection to veterans of certain wars. Their struggles, if not properly remembered and protected, will evaporate into the nebulous haze of our collective forgetting. That's what today's holiday is meant to struggle against. In my last post , I was thankful for the ability to forget. Today, I'm thankful that other people have worked diligently to ensure that I remember.

And in the spirit of that, I'll leave you with Iron & Wine's cover of New Order's "Love Vigilantes." Its spare, unadorned arrangement creates in my mind a nexus between the Flint Hills' survivor's narrative, my grandfather's heedless bravery, and the wondrous, delicate magic that allows me to never forget why both of those matter. So there, on my wall, his medals will remain, as commonplace tributes to uncommon courage. Have safe travels out there. If you happen upon scenery that triggers reflection, be sure to keep the car between the lines.