if she had a hammer…
by bam
if i close my eyes and conjure my mama, i do not see her face. i do not see her knees. or her lap. or her shoulders that have borne their share of weight–and then some.
no, i see my mama’s hands. ample hands. padded hands, not the sculpted sort at all, ones with nails clipped short, plain, unpainted, nails meant to steer clear from distraction, stay of out of the way, stand back and get the job done. i see fingers sturdy. fingers curled around a tool, most likely. most happily, for certain.
i see my mama with her bare, sure hands, on a chill spring day, the clouds erupted in an unrelenting mist. i see her baring down on the handle of a shovel. a shovel above a grave. where she is digging a hole that i might never have been able to dig. she digs a hole for the teeny baby girl we have come to bury, to tuck atop my papa’s chest. or what would have been, once.
i see my mama with a chair upturned, screwing in a leg. making a wobble vanish, disappear, with the alchemy of match sticks and paper wads she is known to pull from her bag of tricks when there is a job to be done and she does it her way. her unschooled, unorthodox, pay-no-mind-to-rules way. she employs pure common sense, and a bit of spit, when necessary.
and so it was, just the other weekend, she and i had at it. just steady hands and a screwdriver or two. maybe a tiny nail, at the start. and, of course, a hammer.
see, i’d cooked up this notion that what my ol’ screen porch needed was a long dining table. not the squat children’s table we’d been hauling over, nestled there between our knees and plates. half the beans, the blueberries tumbling to the floor, as they tried to cross the chasm between where the table left off and our lips began.
a year or so ago i’d eyed an old wood door, a fine door, a door that long ago had marked a fine separation from one chamber to another.
somehow, that old door had been discarded, its time up. its journey through.
it was tossed out where the dumpsters are. and where the great green garbage trucks rumble by, chew what’s left out for their week’s digestion.
i spied that door before the trucks rolled up. i hauled it home. breathed possibility down its rough-hewn, paint-flaked neck. wasn’t sure quite what i’d do, or how i’d use that plank of oak. but i was not letting it get away. not abetting its demise.
its journey hardly ended, i turned it on its side in my garage. i let it incubate, summer, winter, spring. and then, i do believe, once again as well.
but then, one too many blueberries lost between my thighs, i suddenly saw its next incarnation.
that door would be my dining table. it would be the launching pad for meals and nights that lingered on, until the last star twinkled. it would be the plane where elbows, deep in thought, were planted–despite the rudiments of etiquette that chide such churlish plunking down of joints.
upon my table’s woody cheeks, years and years of candle wax would drip. heaven’s sake, who would mind a spill?
i could picture it, the whole of it: that re-anointed door would anchor all the summers’ meals where lake breeze and nightsounds were as much a part of what was served as the gazpacho and the endless wine.
only thing is, i am the apprentice. my mama, she’s the one who forges on, without much thought. not a synapse stalled, worrying about a glitch that might or might not be. she’ll muscle through. she’s got the hands, after all.
me, i think and plot. take time to launch these notions.
not my mama.
day after i mentioned my passing thought, she was at the hardware store. and then the lumber yard.
i was still drawing pictures in my head. she had four legs and screws and metal plates, all picked out and paid for.
she was coming by, she said, on saturday.
well, well, i thought. so here we go.
sure enough. we had that table upturned in no time. brushed off the flakes of paint, sheared off years of dirt.
without a ruler by her side, she used her pointer and her thumb to mark off just where the plate should be. she screwed and screwed. showed me how to do it, and along the way, made me see, just how fine it is to build the things of which you dream.
don’t be afraid, she did not say. but i heard it loud and clear.
she’d said she hoped to teach my firstborn a thing or two that day. how to work the screwdriver. how to build with little fuss.
“he’ll be off in college soon,” she said. “he’ll need to know how to do things for himself.”
he was nowhere in sight that day. but i was there, all ears and eyes. i was memorizing all she said and didn’t say. i was absorbing my mama’s truest truth: barge ahead, have no fear. fend for yourself. screw madly.
we turned the table upside up. it wobbled just a little bit. but there it was, a place to dine. the table i’d imagined. complete with brass knob still attached. how fine is that, i ask you.
all weekend we ate, we talked, we laughed there. eight good souls pulled up that very night. didn’t wobble too, too much. what with the sticks of wood my mate stuffed underneath, despite the dent to my ego, when he declared no one could eat there, not the way it wobbled.
next morn, we had pancakes too. and syrup. and coffee in a mug that never dared to slosh overboard.
i am busy now, collecting chairs from rummage sales and cobwebbed corners of my friend’s garage. i am splattering each with paint. distressing.
i have no idea what i’m doing, really. but i am not afraid. and i’m not one bit worried.
i am doing what my mama taught me on that perfect summer’s afternoon: i am inventing as i go. i am making what i dream of. i am, deep inside, quite content with tools i never knew i owned.
not the least of which is powered solely by my willingness to try. and care not about a piddly little wobble.
do you like to bang around with a box of tools? do you get a kick out of building things you dream of? do you whip up the curtains of your dreams? or stuff a chair, perhaps, just because you see one in your mind? what are some of the lessons you learned at your mama’s side, or your papa’s, when you were old enough to have long been on your own?
How clever that you fashioned a table from a door … one with character already built-in. I’m the sort that can’t pass up an old ladder back chair, sitting alone, cast into the dusty corner of the second-hand-man’s store. No mates to keep it company? Who cares! An orphaned chair, or other ‘finds’, can speak to my heart for some reason and eventually find the way thome to my house.
Ooops … the way ‘thome’? Should read ‘home’, but you probably already figured that out.And, I also forgot to acknowledge that amazing mama or yours … wise, wise, wise ………
Lovely essay. Lovely experience. This gives a whole new meaning to the name of your blog “Pull Up A Chair”–you probably mean we should pull it up out of the garbage or out of storage, dust it, splatter paint it, and scoot it up to the table that was a door.
Mama, mia!I’m 7 or 8 years old, up in Northern Michigan with our family on vacation, up early, as usual, so is Mama, so she winks at me and says “Let’s take the boat out!” and we run down to the dock and she starts the outboard up, and all I remember as we left the dock was the bow raising up as Mama mia pushed the throttle forward with a grin. That “get ‘er done” spirit, is one of her gifts to me. Insightful foresight, which you touched on, was and is always flowing from Mama. There’s a tree in our yard, on the west side, which she gave me back in ’90, a Raywood ash, now it’s about 35 feet tall and grand. It was 5 feet tall when she helped dig the hole and plant it, she looked at me and said “This will ‘hold’ the hill.” Every time I see it I hear the echo. :)I loved your table story, that impartation thing, the love pouring out into a younger vessel that carries it forward.
I noticed the above entry features her hand on the throttle, then her hand gesturing about the tree “holding the hill”. Hands that bequeath. Then I see the door becomes a table, once it was “a fine separation from one chamber to another” and now it goes horizontal, so we sit at it, instead of walking through it, and now it gives us passage to deeper chambers.
i want a mug of coffee at that table!! pancake breakfast would be great there!! a wonderful story, and horace ontal’s insights are fascinating!
another lovely tale and a table! inventing as you go is the best way 🙂
Isn’t it so handy to have a handy mom, it makes life so much more funand adventuresome. They sure help take the mystery out of certain thingsand explain them, so we can then say ” OH, you are right , I can make that” ! and then ……….they (the moms) get excited and start taking over your project……and then……..it’s not your project anymore……and then……when it’s done they give you all the credit and you don’t want it or deserve it…and the project turns out better tan you could have imagined. Is that what ya mean Barbara , by having a handy mom, like mine ! ha ha ha.
hmm, horace ontal eh? would that be vert ickle’s sideways twin. i think i smell a punster. and he hails from AZ or maine…..hmmmmmm. you crack me up. love dora nobb
this makes me think of learning how to knit from my mother when i was in my early adolescence. i remember it so well because she is left handed and i am right handed, so we knit backwards from one another. there was some general confusion before i finally got the hang of it. =)at any rate, my mother is a maker and a doer as well, and it’s one of the things i admire most about her.
ivy, your knitting story reminded me of my mama … a woman who is darn handy at many things, but ……… when I was a little girl, someone taught her how to knit but failed to show her how to STOP … I remember a knitted afghan so big it could have easily covered the roof!bam … I smell something fishy too … I think the culprit resides nearby on a very high hill ….. hmmmmm?
Ok….I am from a family of “check writers”…not a fixit or inventive soul in the crowd. My dear grandfather had to have a ladder put up to the window to help him out of the bedroom, as he had painted the floor and himself into a corner AND he was a well respected judge no less. My dear husband took down a door to plane as it was not closing because of carpet. When I returned hours later -he was still working on the door. I only understood the truth of the matter that night when I retired and could see light coming in from the hall at the top of the door. He had initially planed the wrong side AND he is a well respected lawyer. Sometimes checks are a good thing.
Loooooove the door! Such a find…., I am a BIG finder of cast off treasures…translation-trash collector… I really like the dora knob,(hah hah).. i had a collection of wonderful door knobs that eventually graced the doors of my first house. The idea of the lives contained in their patina is fascinating to me. Both of my boys have beautiful bureaus straight from the curbside… after a trip to mom’s makeover manor they are truly wonderful….. The cherry 30’s? piece has the partitioned jewelry drawer and initially held the faint scent of a ladies perfume………I like to imagine that her lace hankies were kept in that space….. This curbside shopping all started because a young single person doesn’t always have the abililty to visit ethan allen for apartment furnishings!! a sharp eye , a can of paint, and a butter knife screwdriver can make even the dinkiest of apartments hip……….. fyi- you can use the side of your pliers as a hammer when you have to!! The years passed but not the passion for things with that still have life to offer………albeit, not always used in the way originally intended……. I’m sorry your firstborn missed the lesson… he may need that resourcefulness soon…with college looming in the not too distant future. The wise one will just have to pack an overnight and pay a visit to give a one-on-one when the time comes! I’m happy for your shared experience and I’m happy you’ve employed your ‘find’….. pooh, pooh to the one with no faith in the wobble…. maybe he can hold on to the door knob during your outdoor meals!! hah,hahEmbrace the wobble………, embrace the wobble………
Love to read this blog. Helps dispel the fog. Brightens many a day. In a most eloquent way.
shel lacquer, wow, what was YOUR mama inhaling’ when she named you?!?!?!?!?!? anyway, ol’ shel, i love love love your notion about inhaling the fragrance of the someone else whose life rubbed up against whatever it is we bring into our own home and history. if i could i would live in a house made wholly of odds and sods. unmatched doors. all sorts of knobs. windows for tables. (but not vice versa). our kitchen floor now comes from ol’ dismantled barns and buildings up new hampshire way. i would so welcome the scent of some long-lost lady’s perfume in the partitioned jewelry drawer. anyway, that whole layering of history enchants me. especially for those of us for whom a house is a living breathing thing. and we are but its momentary inhabitants, even when it feels through and through like ours and ours alone…..it actually pains me at this moment to think of someone else walking these halls. i must not be anywhere near ready to not think of this house as deep unto our roots. i love that i am the caretaker so much later than whoever built it, i love knowing that i love and care for it so. so why, i wonder, does it make me feel so sad and such loss to think of it down the road no longer ours? for every season……..anyway, the ol table nearly drowned today in the flood that came our way. we bailed for hours and hours…….more thunderstorms due tonight….my hands are covered in blisters from all the sweeping of the mucky water… gnight horace and vert and shel and dora and all you aptly named good souls. gnight, gracie too….
After this weekend’s record rains in Chicago, there may be more items at the curbside to turn into interesting, fun and useful items. Keep your eyes open!