I’m a Carpenter AND a Writer
Hitting My Head, Writing My Life
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The Best-Laid Plans…
Yesterday I whacked my head into the edge of a low staging plank at my job site while sweeping up some debris. It was such a hard hit that I cried out with frustration and pain. Two minutes later I picked up a board that I’d just torn off the building and a nail pierced my thumb. It was time to call it a day.
Forty years ago, my girlfriend’s father offered me a job framing houses. I had just dropped out of college. I said sure. I knew I didn’t want to be a construction worker but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to gain a few carpentry skills before beginning the adventurous life I was sure lay ahead.
What happened in those forty years? How is it that I ended up making my living as a carpenter despite my intentions? I can’t even tell you how many attempts I made to change the course of my career; I tried college three or four times, I joined the Army, I worked in a bookstore, I tried woodworking, guitar building, rare-book dealing, soap making, antiques. I worked for an electrician once, drove for an airport shuttle service as well as a package delivery service, but I always fell back into carpentry.
My dad was a carpenter. He worked commercial construction, building gang forms for highway bridge abutments and running steel studs in office buildings around Boston. My grandfather was a carpenter. He bought distressed tenement buildings in Southeastern Massachusetts and divided big apartments into little apartments. My uncles were truck drivers, electricians, maintenance workers; one was a civil engineer with the DPW.
But, Books…
If you were to ask me to name the defining feature, or essence, or power of my life, I would not say carpentry, I would say books. I’ve been reading voraciously since the third grade. I still remember that first children’s mystery novel that practically leapt off the shelf at my grammar school’s library into my hands and said, “Read me, you need me!” In high school there was more often than not a textbook on my desk but a novel in my lap (I think my teachers knew and didn’t care). I once briefly dated an English teacher, who interrupted a conversation to say, “Gosh, you’re better read than I am!”
In the ninth grade I completed a writing assignment—a short story—and my English teacher liked it so much he praised me in front of the whole class and announced he was giving me an automatic A for the semester and exempting me from all remaining exams (it was both flattering and awkward). In the eleventh grade, my creative writing teacher urged me to try college (which I did, but not in writing).
But, But….
I’m not so unevolved as to think that I “wasted” my life. We humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the invention of “jobs,” before we started obsessing over our life’s calling. I understand that it’s more important and more satisfying to live with presence and appreciation for what’s in front of me than to chase after illusive images of success.
And I don’t feel that a person of 60 years who has discovered that he can indeed find an audience for his writing must now rush to make up for lost time, find a publisher, write a book, “make his mark” before it’s too late. I really do not feel that way. I’m happy just to be writing.
But I hit my head hard yesterday, and it reminded me that for the past several years I have dreamed of retiring from construction, paying off my mortgage, and living somewhere warm and beautiful—Sedona, Arizona, for example. I’d build a little writer’s cabin out back of my property, sit in there with the door open to the sun on the red rocks, my laptop and coffee in front of me, mining my life for ideas. And I would share my stories and narratives with you, and with the world.
Happy Holidays, my friends! 🙏💚
DB
Sounds like a fine dream to settle in Sedona. I love how you embrace life in all its myriad paths. I think that one reason I fell in love with books is I could choose my own path, choose the stories I wanted to read. At times in my life I felt that I didn't have many options and that I had to go down a certain path. But with books I could always choose and it afforded me a freedom not always found in my daily life. Thanks as always Don.
My husband and I just built a library/writer's nook for both of us on our property in the wintry woods of Northern Michigan. Far from Sedona, but heaven for us. Thanks as always for a delightful read despite the bonk to the head.