Facing the Music Read Free Page A

find peaceful moments of rest. Little moments of respite, like mending a fence or grooming a horse. The everyday chores of the farm would predictably bend to our will and hard work. From him, I would learn a kind of patience in suffering, of living between that which we had the power to change and a determination to survive what we could not.

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    T ime spent alongside my father was precious.
    I delighted in the Saturday mornings when he would invite my sister and me to join him on his trips to town. The simple pleasure of being by his side was joyful. Long before the days when seat belts were mandatory, we would stand up on the bench seat of the pickup truck so that we could see the world speeding by. He would give us the rundown of the day’s schedule. A trip to the feed yard to buy oats for the horses. Out to Walmart for motor oil for our tractor. Then, off to the lumberyard to get supplies for repairs around the farm.
    Oh, how I loved going to the lumberyard! It was a place where the necessary tools of my father’s blue-collar world were laid out in full glory. I loved watching him in his element, potent and empowered among his like-minded peers. All the men would stand about in their worked-in clothes, paint spattered and dusty, talking about how they were going to tackle this project or that.
    The smell of freshly cut timbers and chugging noises of forklifts only added to the excitement. I was in awe of the organized library of treated pine, two by fours of various lengths and wood types, stacked so high in the warehouse. There were stacks of brick, pallets of colorful tile, sheet rock, and plywood, and binsof nails, screws, brass hinges, and knobs. Each was mysterious to me, but all were the tools of my father’s talent.
    As he confidently called for the cuts of lumber he required, I stood back, taking it all in. I believed each man there to be deft and skillful in his craft, astounded by their knowledge of how to shape all that waiting wood with nails and power tools.
    I saw my father as having the power to sculpt the world into shape. What would it be this weekend, I wondered? A nifty saddle rack? A ladder to the hay loft? Maybe a swinging barn door?
    With a few planks of wood and a hammer, my father’s skills inspired my creativity then as much as any Picasso does today . I’ll always remember him pulling back from a newly completed construction, wiping the sweat from his brow to clear his eyes so that he could survey his accomplishments. Sometimes, I wonder if the artist that I grew up to be wasn’t in some way inspired by his gift.
    Among the most treasured gifts he gave me were the leftover wood scraps, near-empty paint cans, and rusted nails that I could make my own creations. Sometimes, he would lend me one of his precious tools to assist me in my project. Oh, the terror of sawing off a finger! He sat aside any worries that I might pound my thumb to a purple and nail-less pulp when he gave me a hammer. It was his way of instilling confidence in my own abilities, though I might have been but a little girl. He trusted me to learn by doing, even if it meant the odd bruise or splinter.
    Those long hours that we spent, side by side, building our projects were our escape. We rarely spoke of the tension that came from the fallout of his and my mother’s life together. Nor did we speak of how to manage the growing anger and resentment that was becoming an everyday reality between my stepmother and me. Instead, the reassuring noises came from therhythms of our construction. The calm pulse of my father’s breath in sync with the athletic whaah-hee! whaah-hee! whaah-hee! of the hand saw, or the tap-tap-bang! as he pounded in the nails.

    THESE OUTSIDE NOISES were soothing compared to those that happened inside our home, where we were a family of conflict. By the time I was ten years old, my stepmother’s mercurial personality was the force that we would all revolve around.
    It is