Handy Man

There are lots of other things I miss a great deal about my husband, but one important one is his talent as a Handy Man. For a man occupied all of his working life with ledgers and pens and numerals,  he would  have made an excellent carpenter. Even when we ventured into having houses built from scratch, he got himself involved. There were constant visits and talks with the contractors, serious studies of roof slants and drainage and beams but, someone else did the actual hammering and cutting. Where he really shone was the renovation projects we got ourselves into. A lot of people doing renovations, and I include women like my mother, drew up a plan on a scrap of paper and then by gosh and by golly, grabbed a saw and went at it. If something didn't quite fit, it was squeezed into, sawn off, filled in or taken apart to start all over again. But not my husband. He measured and planned and drew and tested ahead of time and searched for exactly the right materials. On the other hand, his father would pick up old two by fours and part planks that drifted in on the tide and nail them into place with dozens of random nails, few new ones, and while the end product stayed there for decades without budging, it looked like a piece of horror chamber equipment. A boyfriend I had was the same. I asked him to put a nail in the wall to hang something on and ended up with a huge screw half in and half out that had a dangerous tilt to it. But he was so proud of it,  I didn't have the heart to critique. But that husband of mine wouldn't have allowed such a mess. One of the projects he accomplished, was to insulate a very old house we bought, that had never known fibreglass. The pink batts were applied and then held in by some kind of large flat plywood efforts with slats so that the long living room walls looked like a wooden spider's web spun by a diabolically mad insect. But it worked. And later, the time that I decided to surprise him by putting up the wallpaper all by myself in the en suite, to see his surprised looks was memorable. Luckily, the store had more of the same pattern. That's when I learned what a plumb bob was. I miss hinting things like "I would love to see a shelf there" or "wouldn't a window on that wall, light up this space" and know that those wishes would come true and be beautiful, solid and straight. I miss, too, the person who lifted heavy items and moved big pieces of furniture into place, who fixed plumbing and knew about electrical wires and could reach high shelves and who never lost his temper when he hit his finger with a hammer, mostly because he didn't. I did buy a wonderful new cordless screwdriver recently, that was recommended by a person who said everyone should have one, and actually put up a curtain rod. It was a daunting experience and I hope that no one ever sees any of the extra holes in the plaster that are hidden behind the draperies.