My scalp went tingly and my vision tunneled. This news was completely unexpected. Not the new garden seeds, the weather, or the lazy cat, but the relabeling of what I’d believed was a pinched nerve in his right leg. Dad had been taking care of my ailing grandparents for ten years, his own health ignored. “Multiple sclerosis, and snow,” I said, not sure what the fumbling words meant. But when you talk to a Wisconsinite, every conversation has something to do with snow or the Packers, and football just didn’t seem to fit. We talked medications and management, but with no cure and few successful treatments, there wasn’t much to say. Even the words “I love you, Dad” lost bulky weight, bubbling up fragile and wispy across my tongue.
He was still a few years from his planned retirement and one of the most brilliant and active people I’d ever known. I said these things over and over, as though his wit, energy, and proximity to free time should have wrapped him in a blanket of immunity. The sudden, undeniable truth of Dad’s mortality crushed the air from my lungs, and even when I stood in my backyard with my arms lifted to the sky, the world no longer seemed big enough for me to inhale fully.
I was toppled by the reversal of who would be taking care of whom. Even though I was eight hundred miles away, I wanted to drop everything and run to him, slipping and sliding up his frozen sidewalk. But I had my own messy life to deal with in Arkansas, so I hadn’t seen him as much as I needed to. And my messes just seemed to grow bigger and bigger. I didn’t expect more than phone advice from him when I started building, so seeing him at my kitchen table sketching ideas on the back of my junk mail was an enormous relief. He was six foot two, lanky, and still looked strong as ever.
“So exactly how much do you know about building a house?” Drew asked.
“Oh, quite a bit,” Dad said. “I built the house your mom grew up in. Course my dad helped. And all of his brothers. We had some friends who helped out quite a bit. And it was a lot smaller than the house you planned here. A third of the size, maybe. And it had a basement, so all the plumbing and vents ran down there, which made them easier to get to. Oh, and the roof structure was a lot different. Has to handle a hell of a snow load. But a house is a house. Nothing to it really.”
The kids and I exchanged nervous half smiles. It was too late to fool us with dismissive remarks about the simplicity of building a house. And we were all too aware that a work crew of a couple of teens, a 110-pound woman, and a grandpa with a chronic illness was nothing at all like having a huge family and pile of friends over for an old-fashioned barn raising. Maybe Dad knew that, too, or maybe he’s to blame for my congenital optimism.
“We’d better get my car unloaded,” Dad said. “Put it off long enough.”
“What did you bring?” Jada asked, hanging on his arm and bouncing on her toes.
“I came from Wisconsin, didn’t I? I brought enough cheese that we’re gonna need a wheelbarrow to carry it in!”
And he wasn’t kidding. If Dad had a motto it would include the words “bargain” and “bulk.” He had stopped at one of the Amish communities and bought a fifty-pound block of cheddar.
We spent the next couple of hours cutting it into blocks to bag and freeze. Fortunately, he had also picked up a half pallet of plastic bags intended for hot-dog buns. They were food-safe and perfect except for a smear on the printed logo that put them in a discount store. We had a lifetime supply of plastic and cheese.
We were binge-drinking slushies while we worked. “Whole flats of strawberries for a couple of dollars,” Dad bragged. “Just because they were going bad. Cleaned up and frozen they make perfect slushies. I added grapes to the mix, too, half a trash bag for a dollar. Just can’t let that go to waste. Think of all the work that went into growing those grapes and shipping them across the country. Might as well stick ’em in our head.”
“Brain freeze!” Jada yelled. “I have brain freeze.”
Roman ran in circles, laughing and drooling strawberry slushy. “My brain froze! I a ice cube in my head! Brain slushies!”
Just when I thought we had processed the last of Dad’s gifts, he came in dragging two full-size coolers. “Turn the oven on,” he said. “I brought turkeys!”
Yes, that was plural. Turkeys.
We baked through the rest of the day and all night. Then we stripped the turkeys clean, filling plastic bags with meat for sandwiches on the job site. We’d eat turkey and cheese until we gobbled and sprouted feathers.
Hope and Drew piled a final load of bags next to the pantry. I didn’t look inside, happy that whatever we had it didn’t need to be cut, shredded, blended, or stored in the now-packed refrigerator and extra freezer. The rest of Dad’s treasures would be revealed soon enough.
Our first few days on the job site with Dad were spent planning more than building. It was no surprise that some of my original plans weren’t the best use of space or materials, and Dad was nothing if not frugal.
Both of my parents believed in improving standard designs or inventing new ones. They dug a full-size swimming pool—with shovels—when I was six. They made plans for a build-it-yourself motorized glider and talked about building a car with a kit from a magazine. They fashioned custom tools and devices, Dad with metal and concrete, Mom with wood and fabric. They stood in the store planning how to modify and improve an item before they even made it to the checkout line. “Cut this part off, add a wheel here, put a rubber handle on this, and it will be perfect!” Dad would say, and Mom would nod, and rework the plan on the way to the car. They gardened and hunted, home-canning vegetables, fruits, and meat. They made our meals and furniture from scratch. Most important, they taught me that I could build anything I could imagine. Granted, they didn’t expect me to dream quite so big.
“There’s a better way to get this plywood on the exterior. Safer,” Dad said. Then he drilled two small holes in the center of a four-by-eight sheet of plywood and threaded a rope through them while I gritted my teeth, convinced that he was ruining the sheet. “Now you can pull it up from inside the house, just one person guiding it from a ladder. You’ll have a lower risk of head injuries at least.”
He was right, of course. “What about the holes from the rope? Won’t they let cold air in?”
“Those little pinpricks? It’ll be a damn miracle if you don’t have gaps big enough to put your head through in other spots. If they bother you, glue on a piece of foam or caulk them. No biggie. Least of your problems.”
Perspective. That’s what Dad offered. Not always the perfect opinion, but always an intelligent one. Having someone else to bounce ideas off was a relief. I wasn’t alone anymore.
Roman toddled up after we had most of the downstairs plywood in place on a Friday night. “I a doughnut!” He was completely naked and had rolled himself in sand. Sugar-coated. The section of our sand pile that I’d roped off for him was his new favorite play place, even though I wasn’t sure if I preferred it over mud.