Hiding Places

I’ve been tearing apart my hiding place.

An endeavor best pursued after the day’s work is done while drinking cheap red wine from a box.

I’ve hid from much in the little red barn that sold me on moving to Jimtown a decade ago -responsibilities, people, the world.

But even with the extension my hiding place needed to be gutted to make room for the building of a 25 foot boat.

And everything had to be put on little wheels.

While that was fine in theory, confronting the task has meant stirring up old dust and old memories.

The outfeed table was the hardest.

I follow a Facebook group where pictures are shared of assembly tables immaculately made of fine hardwoods and sold for prices rivalling the downpayment on my house through which no-one would dream of driving deck screws to hold a jig.

Mine was slapped together out of two sheets of ¾ inch spruce plywood and on which I’ve built 17 dining room tables, three kitchens, two desks, three bookshelves, five end tables, a bar and a 16 foot lapstrake wherry.

It bears the marks of all of them – traced pencil lines, spilled varnish, woodglue droplets, epoxy, booze, the odd stain of blood and memories.

There’s when Peter the Slovak, then a fellow bachelor and roommate in the house, declared he was going for a run and left the shed. I can still see the burn of the cigarette I lit when he left the shop and had just pressed out on the table when he returned out of breath and making as if he’d arrived to tell Athens of victory at the Battle of Marathon.

This is the table on which I and the much missed Buddy Doucette would lean, drink the Molson Canadian he always arrived with, and ponder with great severity the wide spinning world.

And the table on which I would rest my feet as I leaned back by the warm woodstove and close my eyes after having told Suzy up in the house that I was going to build our new cabinets.

It’s where I tumbled over the worry and anticipation of two children while trying to pay the mortgage with my hands over an 18 month strike.

After staring at it for an hour, the shock was in how easy it came apart and how light to move.

With this acceptance of impermanence, the work grew quicker.

Now and then we need to tear apart our hiding places if we’re going to loft out new hiding places.