Today I am organizing the basement…listening to Christmas music because it always makes me happy.
After clearing the garden and laundry spaces, and rearranging the dregs of lumber left from a tear down project, I moved to the tool area.
When I was growing up, my Daddy had lots and lots of tools. He was a mechanic, woodworker, and metal worker. I grew up thinking all men knew all this stuff. He would let us use his tools when we were out in the garage with him. We got to sand furniture, hammer nails and saw wood. He had every hand tool imaginable…and power tools and the beloved table saw.
Daddy passed and years later when Mom sold the house…I sat in the garage and sorted four sets of basic hand tools and placed them in four tool boxes. I wanted my children to be able to have a part of their grandfather. Two of our children never met him. Only heard about how he could do anything and that I cherished the tools he used to build my dresser and rebuild the engine in my first car.
Now I discover that sometime over the years, the four toolboxes are askew. Somewhere in time, the well thought out tool selection in each box has been rearranged…one has electric cords, one all the saws, etc. It figures, about the time I am ready to let them go to gthe children..they are a mess! So here I am on a stool with toolboxes, trays, crates and tools all strewn about to be sorted. Memories triggered by the smell of old tool…I tear up thinking about all the things Daddy designed, built and fixed out in his garage. After he died, the tools became like an extension of him that was tangible.
His treasured table saw is safely in the hands of a dear friend…somewhere in the last cross country move, two boxes of power tools went amiss. The day I realized this, my world blurred. I do not know why even as I write these words, tears flow down my cheeks. They are just things…and yet those tools were so much a part of who he was, his passion and vocation, his bliss and his nature. His creative instruments every bit the same as a pianist’s piano.
Today I sit amid his crescent wrenches, hammers, screw drivers (phillips and flathead) his awls, furniture clamps, c-clamps soldering gun and planing tool, his punches, allen wrenches and pliers, his files and saws and very dated safety glasses. I treasure the dremel tool that predates Martha by decades and the smoothing tool he used when he and the guys poured the concrete driveway in front of the house.
I feel grateful to be able to pick up the same hammer I used when I was a young girl to bang a nail into a block of wood. It feels good to have these reminders of my childhood and of the times I was at my Daddy’s side out in the garage.
When I moved into my first apartment -after college, Daddy gave me a tool box. It was the same box his mother-in-law had given him when he married my mom. Only the very basics were included: hammer, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc., all well-used. But the best items were the odds and ends of small, plastic boxes that contained nails, screws, tacks, etc., but nothing new. Having grown up during the depression, he learned early the value of finding and reusing, and among the items he brought home from Germany after WWII were his collection of those found screws, nails, etc. That tool box, in addition to the stuff, included the greatest intangible gift: values.
That is so beautiful Lucia. Thank you for sharing…Blessing, Teresa