The Old Builder

Tonight I sit in an emergency room.

Machines hum.

Fluorescent lights buzz.

Time holds.

Across from me sits the man who taught me how to build.

The old builder.

We wait.

Diagnosis unknown.

No one says it.

But it's here.

Will the hands that built so much ever build again?

I sit beside him like a Ronin on watch.

Still.

Quiet.

Useless in the way waiting always is.

Memory comes back in fragments.

The table saw.

The smell of cut wood.

The sharp scream of the blade.

"Hold it steady," he said.

"Use the tool. Don't let it use you."

His hands.

Certain.

Calm.

Final.

I remember the cabinets.

Boxes that had to be square or they were nothing.

"The trick is simple," he said.

Cut the rabbet first.

Use the back to pull it square."

If the back was true,

the box had no choice.

Place it.

It would come into line.

The cabinet didn't argue.

It revealed what was off.

I thought we were building cabinets.

I wasn't paying attention.

Years pass.

Jobsites.

Drawings.

Decisions.

You start to move like him.

Think like him.

If only in how you build.

Until one day you realize

you're the one holding the boards.

And then time returns.

Not to teach.

To inspect.

Tonight I sit across from him.

The builder at rest.

The hands that showed me how to hold the board

now tremble, no longer able to hold it steady.

And the thought arrives without permission.

The blade, now dull from age and disrepair, may never cut again.

No lesson prepares you for that.

No detail solves it.

No drawing explains it.

You just know,

The work is done.

And somehow

It isn't.

Because everything I build

is still being pulled into square

by hands that may never touch a tool again.

Field Note

Hold it steady.

Even when all you can do is wait.