Still Life

I was admonished.  Riding in back with Maeve, rear-facing and buckled into her car seat, Amanda requested I keep the frivolity at a level compatible with Maeve’s temporary state of digestive certitude.  Which meant small giggles and smiles were ok, but not the hilarity of last night’s physical comedy on the ride to dinner and “Paint Park”, where two toddlers (one sixty years older than the other) ran up and down and tumbled laughing to the ground every now and then. 

What mom says, goes.  Only small jokes from Pops on this car ride.

No better way to spin back the miles on the birthday-odometer than being goofy with a grandchild.  Every day is a gift but, as they narrow, their use should be of ascending -- rather than diminishing -- returns.  And thus, the trip to Cleveland.  In a rented minivan across Indiana without satellite radio. 

Amanda knew the answer before she asked the question.  Could I build Maeve’s “big girl” bed?  She knew the answer because I have a modicum of woodworking skill.  And a woodshop.  And all of my fingers (more on that in a bit).  And some scraps of uncommitted time.

Amanda knew the answer before she asked because she had slept in the “big girl” bed I made her thirty-some years ago.  All the way from crib to college and summer breaks.  Built in the garage of our first family house, it was neatly stowed in the basement of our current and last one, for just this moment.  But Amanda wanted something a little different than her bed, which was fashioned as a white picket fence in a garden.  She emailed a picture of a bed for inspiration and my reply was pre-ordained.  “Sure.  I can do that.  You don’t mind if I make it better than that, though?”

The grey walls and anthracite furnishings Poynette offered up for my office were immediately livened up with color and form and real wood.  Rustoleum Red spray paint, 2046 Print Shop and Swissted graphics and quarter-sawn white oak, to be exact.  Atop the file cabinet which now houses a Yamaha amp and tuner along with an office supply of albums, a still life of sorts has taken shape.  Turntable, groovy lamp, a 70s reverb amp and the eagle Dad carved for my 30th birthday.    

Still life paintings can be traced to food and everyday objects painted on tomb walls thousands of years ago to sustain the dead in their afterlife.  They gained artistic momentum as intricate, post-Middle Age compositions, reminding viewers of human mortality and the transience of earthly pleasures.  See also: college polaroids with Bruce Lee posters, Schaefer beer cans and B-52s cassettes impaled on pencils.

People sometimes ask where the woodworking skill came from.  Depending on familiarity more than mood, I sometimes offer up “jail” as the answer.  Then I explain it was an orphanage rather than any sort of criminal undertaking gone wrong.  But … if they come after you when you escape, it is jail. 

I made my first piece of furniture in the orphanage workshop and have not stopped.  It was nothing remarkable; just a nightstand of three intersecting pieces of plywood.  But there’s a whole body of learned knowledge about making something for the future when you are in an institution that operates on the assumption you do not have one. 

Maeve’s bed is that assumption’s antithesis.  I have a picture of it but it is not for internet consumption.  Because it is hers, not mine.  I will say it is something of an ode to joinery -- rabbets, dados, mortise and tenons, blind-splined miters and angled half-laps among the solutions to turning sticks into furniture.  It joyously reuses parts of Amanda’s bed, and it features some of the most beautiful wood the continent produces. 

Curly maple is formed through a mix of genetics and environmental pressures.  Aren’t we all?  It has a wavy grain pattern creating an optical effect called chatoyancy, shimmering as light refracts upon it.  The waves are thought to be the result of a tree growing with counteracting forces, high winds or hillside gravity pulling it in one direction, while sunlight pulls it upward.  It is gorgeous stuff, typically reserved for jewelry boxes or high-end musical instruments.

Amanda’s inspiration photo included a canopy, a pull-out trundle and a bookshelf running along the length of the bed.  The inspiration photo was from a factory-made bed, using factory quality wood. 

So, naturally, I spent days and weeks sorting through woodpiles.  Brides searching for dresses are positively haphazard compared to a furniture maker searching for the right piece of wood. 

I found it.  Then designed the project around it.  I have never seen anything like it and doubt I ever will again.  In the naturally occurring “defects” of the grain, there is a small discoloration, in the shape of a heart. 

I’ve noted previously the “Shack” is the woodshop equivalent of Linus’ pumpkin patch.  It is an unabashedly humble collection of timber yearning for a good home, hand-me-down tools and spiders.  If there was a lowlight in the construction, it might have been when I gave a folding metal sawhorse a solid pop to fold it and the sawhorse hit back, slicing my hand enough for a ride to the ER, where the doctor’s innocent question “Have you ever had stitches before?” resulted in a burst of laughter.  “Doc.  How much time do you have?”

The blood got sanded out of the maple when I got back.  Started back at 60 grit and went to 220.  Or 221, whatever it takes.

The highlight involved substantially less medical paperwork.  There’s 5,000+ songs on the iPod connected to the tape loop on the back of the dust-covered Craig receiver and … just as I was using one of Dad’s tools at a moment where weeks of work could go awry if I messed up … a John Hiatt song randomized its way into the speakers.  The Rest of the Dream.  A great song about … well, becoming and being a dad.  And now, “Pops”. 

Here’s something I learned on the way to becoming Pops.  The “big girl” bed will serve for years, but it will ultimately be replaced.  It will find its way to a basement.  Maybe to be re-used.  Maybe not. 

So, I designed the bookshelf Amanda asked for to be more than a piece in Maeve’s “big girl” bed.  I designed it to last a lifetime.  With the heart not calling attention to itself, but there and visible, wherever the shelf may go.  Off to college.  An apartment.  A home Amanda will visit while she is a grandmother.  Long after I’m gone, Maeve can carry the heart with her. 

I don’t get to see where it ends up, but I do get to give her a place for her stuffed animals, and books today, and secret notes to and from friends years from now, in a bed where she’ll dream her dreams.

Life ain’t still, and I can tell because the still life atop the filing cabinet’s most recent addition is a picture of Maeve.  It has an efficiency function for the mothers and grandmothers and nieces who enter my office.  They can just see the unstoppable cuteness upon entry rather than have me scrolling through my phone.  More importantly, the picture sits right behind my keys.  When the fire pager in the outer office goes off, I say a brief “see ya” to Maeve as I grab the keys and head off to who knows what.

The “see ya” is the cautionary promise to the who knows what.  I am gonna go do something.  I am gonna come back. 

Because there are jokes in the back seat of mom’s car yet to tell.  Riotously silly ones.

Sweet dreams, Maeve.