Time Capsule

Finding old things, forgotten pieces of a life before mine, connects me to my father. I am fixing up my mom's backyard as her birthday gift. It is an large project involving saws, machetes, rakes, wheelbarrows, bags, etc. Today I found the wheelbarrow had a flat. Easy to fix, but my toolbox was in the bedroom. Instead I went into the old shed out back. My father's long-unused tools sat quietly in his large chest, the kind of tool container you see in a garage when you are talking to Joe 6-Pack about how you accidentally hit the curb (leaving out the alcohol content) and why your car pulls to the right, while Joe just looks at you like are talking too fast for him.

In this toolchest I found order, care, and surprising cleanliness. This was a peek at my father's way of doing things before the confusion came over him like a rising tide. I found tools that I had no way of using, from sheer confusion of their purpose as well as lacking something as massive as the tools were meant to be used upon, and amidst the connection to my father's past I managed to find some things that could remove the wheelbarrow wheel. After some air at the local gas-n-sip from the 50-cent pump, I was back and removing sticks and crap with renewed vigor.

I was careful to put my father's tools back where they belonged. They are, still, my father's tools and I merely borrowed them for the task at hand. He doesn't need tools these days, but I respect them as if he would come out and give the toolchest an inspection. I know his hands curved around the handles and put the sockets in with the adapters, so I replace them in the same manner. I wipe my grease-covered fingers with a rag he most surely wiped his hands and tools with sometime in the foggy past.

This is the closest I've been to my father in 18 years and it filled me with content and satisfaction. Thanks Dad.