Like father, unlike son

The final sawn limb popped from the poplar tree, untangled from the utility line and crashed down. Middle-aged, I applauded from a safe distance, like a giddy child.

My old man turned off the pole saw. He rubbed his right forearm, surprised to find two bloody gashes from a tangle with an earlier felled limb and a toppled ladder. I offered him gauze, but he would have none of that. NOT. A. SURPRISE.

My old man is too tough for first aid. Not me. My right wrist was wrapped in gauze due to a serious outbreak of poison ivy – for no other reason really than it made me queasy to look at it uncovered. My old man gave me that you-must-be-adopted tone and said something like, “I can eat poison ivy for breakfast and it won’t bother me,” while he sweated and bled and gazed warily at my gauze – his son a mummy in the making.

Though he had done all the real work and I had stayed well outside the perimeter of “our” tree trimming event, I donned both a bike helmet for my skull and safety glasses – the protective gear necessary in case I had to enter ground zero to deliver him a glass of ice water. Not that he would dare request a glass of water, for that would be like admitting to some kind of weakness.

My old man is of a tougher generation.

He’s also a tool man, has been all his life, which accentuates his toughness.

The pole saw: his.

The chain saw at the base of my poplar tree: his.

I, of a softer generation, am a tool-borrowing man. I have been all my life. Any tool in my hands has likely been his; any tool I own has likely been a present from him.

The stepladder near the tree: a Christmas gift to replace a shorter one gifted to me years earlier. He decided I needed a taller ladder to make it easier for him to climb on my roof for repairs while I watched from below. In the construction trade, my job title would be LADDER HOLDER. Not that he ever asks me to steady his ladder. He prefers a little wobble during the climb. Still, I hold the ladder, my feeble attempt at father-son bonding (not that he’s in the market for that either).

My seldom-used table saw was a gift from him. My neighbor, Jeff, has used it more than me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff and I were accidentally exchanged at birth. By default, my home projects become my old man’s. The ceiling fans, his doing; the kitchen light, his doing; the kitchen and dining room floors, his marks.

Tough guy image aside, he continues to help me out, an extremely kind act considering my childhood history of destroying nearly everything he owned.

Playing sock basketball, I knocked a picture from the living-room wall, its corner frame crashing through the side of the TV cabinet. Suddenly, the show airing, Happy Days, became Unhappy Days. The TV still worked but was never patched, its left-sided wound forever in full view. I spent the rest of my adolescence watching TV in a guilt-ridden state. Not once did he question why I had been playing basketball with a rolled-up sock inside the house instead of shooting real hoops using the wooden basketball goal he built and planted single-handedly in our backyard as a First Communion gift.

With the point of a drawing compass, I etched the entire English alphabet into my parents’ wooden framed couch. I would like to tell you that I was only two years old when I did this, a testimonial perhaps to my budding genius – sadly, I think I was 13 (a slow learner).

Forgetting to check the oil level, I blew up the engine of his Massey Ferguson riding mower; with his borrowed truck, I accidentally backed over his borrowed fishing gear, the rods snapping like twigs. I could go on. He could go on longer.

After freeing the aforementioned tree limbs from the utility line, I helped him load his tools into the truck bed. I noticed a smear of his blood on the pole saw’s plastic engine case. Though from a fresh wound, the stain seemed as permanent there as factory paint.

He drove away, probably en route to help my younger brother with something.

He’s my old man; my dad; my father.

I can’t begin to repay him for all that he’s done for me.

And though he likely won’t hear it, nor expect it, I continue to applaud like a giddy child.

Email Scott at scottsaalman@gmail.com.