Conversation with my Dad, #1

I was cleaning out the smokehouse, one of our outbuildings at the farm, which has been used until now as a deep repository for things unexplored. Amidst old rusting unidentifiable tools and parts, and an extensive collection of my own newer tools, I found the brace-and-bit that belonged to my dad. This is a tool for drilling holes, with a wooden top-handle that you lean on, and a wooden mid-handle that you swing around in a circle to make the drill bit go around. I want to pause now, because I have deep images of my Dad using this tool to drill big holes in wood, calmly, surely, with the steady confidence of someone very familiar with wood and wood tools. And, the splintering sound of wood giving way before the bit. (pause). OK. This tool has my dad’s finger oils, and sweat, embedded in it. The wood shines from his natural oils. I can barely hold it, because it hums with his essence and his being. For all I know, he was looking down on me as I regarded what must have been one of his favorite tools. I held it for a while, in the midst of sorting many tools and objects from the smokehouse, wondering, in the logic of sorting, what should I do with it? Should I save it with my own tools? Like, with the planer and the few other manual, non-power tools that merit keeping in the ‘current’ box? Or put it with the substantial collection of rusting barely-identifiable tools from the ‘30s, to be hung up for decoration? I just stood there for a while, holding this tool, which was eerily like holding my Dad’s hand, having this conversation in my mind. Like, OK, this ‘thing’ explains a good part of him, but not all of him. Does it explain his drug addiction, for instance? Does it explain how he could do AA for years, off alcohol but on hydrocodone? Does it explain how he could transform other people’s lives in a totally meaningful way (in AA), while doped on painkillers? His essential discomfort as an organism satisfied only by drugs? Does it explain my illogical love for him? The only answer was no. I put it in the rusting-display pile. But now, writing this, I think I will rescue it. Somehow, it does explain him.