Today I Buy Lumber

Today is the day that I buy lumber.  It doesn’t sound like much to most, but to me it is a very important purchase.  It will be the first time that a Hillebrand has purchased lumber in over five years.

There are a lot of emotions swirling around in my head as I sit here at 1:21 in the morning.  I can’t stop thinking that I may buy the wrong boards, or that they will be crooked, or that my tools won’t be the right ones, or it will just be too hard.  I think about the countless times I have ran this errand as the ‘helper’ and how it was just an interruption to my Saturday morning cartoon watching in the past.  The biggest thing I think about is can I do this?  Do I have it in my hands?  Am I worthy of the hammer, his hammer?  

Why would strolling through Home Depot and grabbing a few 2x3’s be so difficult?  Well it’s actually very simple.  This is the first time I have ever attempted to build something.  It’s the first time I have ever attempted picking up a hammer, a saw, a chisel, a wood plane, any of the tools of the woodworker, any of the tools of his.  

There has always been a part of me that has wanted to do this.  I’ve always thought about learning to build something, or to at least know enough to fake it at the hardware store.  But, up until the last few years, I haven’t given it much more than a second thought.  For some reason, as I grow older, I feel the need to learn this craft.  I feel the importance of being able to use my hands to create something.  I feel the need to connect with the man I really didn’t take the time to get to know.

Sometimes I think back with some regret that I never had him teach me how to use a set of chisels, or how a mitre box worked.  I think of the times I saw him covered in sawdust and how I should have asked him what he was doing, or how he was doing something.  After I stop the pity party I think to the other side and how he never offered to show me how he performed his craft.  He never said, “Hey, come here and let me show you how a mortise and tenon go together.”  There was none of that.  I don’t blame him; I just know that’s the way he was.  

Before I completely turn off of memory lane, I pass a few more memories.  The random memories of steadying a piece of ¾ inch plywood, and catching a board that came out of the ‘noisy machine” (I know now it was a planer), and bending a piece of oak after it’s steam bath.  These are the memories that have stuck with me and actually taught me much more than I thought they ever would have.  I’m sure he wanted to tell me everything that he was doing, and why he did it but he just didn’t know how to.  He, instead, showed me some basics through his actions.  I learned bits and pieces by watching.  He taught me just enough for me to decide if this was something I wanted to do with my time.  Nothing was pushed, nothing was mandated.  He just showed what you could do with some practice, patients, and desire.   He planted a see, and it finally blossomed.  

He was self-taught.  He read the books, and made the plans, and bought the tools all on his own.  No one told him to learn this craft, he just wanted to.  If this is how he did it then it shall be how I do it.  

I regret waiting this long to go ahead and try my hand at woodworking.  I feel like I have let opportunity go by the wayside, but I also know that I wasn’t ready yet.  I would have given up when the project seemed too hard, or if I didn’t figure out how to do something on the first try.  I realize that there will be many missteps along the way.  He didn’t start out making masterpieces.  I know that the scrap pile saw quite a few mishaps in its day.  I feel that I have the patience it takes to now succeed at this.  Something inside me feels like this is just the right time, and that it WILL work out in the end.  When I look down at my big bear sized hands I think that maybe, just maybe, there is a little more of him in there then I have thought. 

Today.  Today I buy lumber.