Bits and Pieces

When you're middle-aged and relatively healthy, "downsizing" feels great. Decluttering! Simplifying! Purging! Streamlining! It's revitalizing, a welcome palate cleanser before tucking into the next entree in the feast of life.

But it can feel quite different when you're helping an elderly person downsize, especially if that person is your parent.

My mother cherished her possessions--the heirlooms and scraps inherited from her parents, the pretty items she'd picked out herself, the gifts she'd received over the course of a long and rewarding life--and watching her struggle with what to keep and what to shed was distressing.

And why wouldn't it be? The enterprise was prompted by loss--my father's death, Mom's declining health, the slow untethering of her mind and spirit by way of dementia. Parting with objects redolent of younger days and good times is rather the opposite of freeing against that background.

Which is why I came to be in possession of several Ziploc bags stuffed with hundreds of circles of fabric in a multitude of colors.

Half a century and a bit ago, Mom had painstakingly cut out all these little circles from leftover fabric and old clothing.

Some bits were recognizable. A purple and blue ditsy floral pattern came from the remnants of fabric used to make a sundress--one that my petite mom wore in her teens, and that fit me for about five minutes in my own adolescence.

Another scrap I recognized as the material Mom used to make yo-yo pillows for my childhood dollhouse.

Every so often in recent years, the circles had resurfaced in the ongoing sorting-out of objects. "Mom, what are your plans for these?" I'd ask.

Mom would ruffle the circles in the bag for a bit and reply, "I don't know. I might use them for something." Back they'd go into a box for another year . (I didn't object...Storing Stuff That Might Be Useful is part of my DNA, too.)

So here they are again, eight months after Mom's death. Still with the needle stuck in the fabric where she'd last poked it when setting the project aside back in the 1950s.

I didn't want to just get rid of them, even though sewing and I do not get along. Oh, I can hem things, and I would really like to be able to sew stuffed animals (though truthfully, I'd rather have completed creating the stuffed animals, without ever having had to do the actual sewing of them).

But sewing, with the stupid thread that ties itself in knots  even though it has no beginning or ending in the loop...and all that measuring...it makes me want to gnash my teeth and rend my garments. (Though I won't, because then I'd have to sew the garments.)

Still, sometimes I need a fairly mindless activity to take my mind off tasks, an activity that doesn't require reading or writing; stitching circles together to make...something...didn't seem like a bad plan.

First, I separated the circles to see if I could find any clues to the plans Mom might've had for them. "Please, please, do not reveal that Mom ever intended to make one of those yo-yo clowns," I thought.

(I wanted to supply a public-domain image of a yo-yo clown here for reference, but could not find one. However, dear reader, bow your head in thanks that I have spared you the frightening task of Googling clown images.)

Then this appeared among the circles:

Fortunately, Mom herself was not enchanted with her foray into clown-making, because she got much further in a project involving stitching yo-yos together to make flowers:

By now I'd planned to finish making yo-yos out of the fabric circles and sewing them together anyway to create a colorful tablecloth. So revising the design to make yo-yo flowers first and then stitching the flowers together was simple enough.

Finishing this project for Mom won't sew up the raveled edges of a life without her, but it's a lovely feeling nonetheless.

The Fifth Father's Day

We're approaching our fifth Father's Day now without Dad. Which seems impossible--impossible both that he's not here, and that it has been five years. So much happened during that span that it wasn't until this past spring that I was able to deliver on a promise we made to him in his last month--that we would take good care of his book collection and not just chuck it in the bin at a thrift store.

My dad was never without a stack of books to read. He consumed a steady supply of books about history, mathematics, and airplanes (he was an aerodynamics engineer) and also would fasten on to subjects that he'd pursue for months on end. Among the last ones were the Peloponnesian war and the building of the Panama Canal.

All those books would be carefully bookmarked with his favorite marker: a computer punch card from his early days at Grumman Aerospace. He had stacks of them, having retrieved them from the company when they were throwing them away after they were outmoded.

Often these cards bear a list of words my dad encountered in his reading and intended to look up, sometimes because he didn't know the meaning but more often because he wanted to learn more about the word's origins.

After his death, and our mom's subsequent move to a smaller home, the vast majority of the household's books were easily sorted: history and boating books mainly went to one brother's household, a lot of science books to mine, cooking ones to my sister and me, a handful of aircraft books to my nephews.

But finding a place for his aeronautical and engineering books, many of which were highly technical, would be hard--that is, if Boeing's own museum and library wasn't interested.

We didn't want to ask them point-blank if they just wanted boxes and boxes of books, so I set out to catalog the entire collection and gather it in one document so the librarians could pick and choose according to the needs of their library.

Sounds tedious, but it actually offered ample time to muse on the office--the "den" as we called it--where Dad kept his books when we were kids and worked late sometimes on special projects. It was a tiny room, rather dark, but we were always welcome even though now I know we were probably delaying his work by popping in to visit.

I recall gazing up in wonder at all those books, many of them somber-looking tomes from the 1940s and early 1950s, and whispering in awe, "Wow, Dad, you must be really smart!"

"Not really," he chuckled. (But he was.)

Sometimes as I flipped the pages of a book after gleaning the title, author, and publication date, a computer card or piece of paper would fall out, or I'd find a note written on a page. Because the mathematics involved are totally beyond my understanding, I could only marvel at the inscrutability of what was amazing to him.

One item in his library was a 4-inch-thick bound stack of papers with 7 or 8 columns of numbers on each page, just a river of data pouring through the volume. On one page, in one column, Dad had corrected a few digits in one number after the decimal point. How he could've spotted that error utterly escapes me.

I loved seeing the enthusiasm he had in acquiring a volume, and how the engineers kept a running history in a beloved book, as if it were a family Bible:

On a more down-to-earth level, I enjoyed seeing how his signature changed over the years: from a student's careful script...

to the firm hand of a graduate...

to the confident use of his nickname and purple ink of his later years. He preferred purple felt-tip pens and was dismayed when local stationers and office supply stores ceased carrying them. One of my last Christmas gifts to him was a big box of purple Papermate felt-tips. I was sure he'd have years more of using them.

It was also pretty cool to Google the house in  New Hyde Park where he lived as an older child; it's still standing. Not sure exactly where he lived as a little kid--I know it was an apartment building in Queens, that his dad and mom (German immigrants) were the caretakers of the building, and that due to their position they had access to the basement, which made Dad a king among his peers as they ran up and down alleys fighting endless world wars.

After cataloging everything from "Akin, J. E., Finite Elements for Analysis and Design" to "Watman, H., 'Assessment of the Unified Approach for Predicting the Hypersonic Characteristics of a High L/D Reentry Glider,'" I contacted the Boeing library, and fortunately they were interested in taking on most of the books; the old books were particularly welcome because historians and engineering students delved into them in their work. Plus there were my dad's own folders of writing and collected materials on the development of aircraft on which he worked.

I hauled them all up to Boeing's restoration center on a gray March morning. We know Dad would be really glad to think of his books in the hands of another generation of engineers.

I also know Dad would be very amused and slightly appalled (if you can be such a thing) at my saving bits and pieces like scribbles on paper. He'd probably make some jokes about relics and Oliver Plunkett's head. I don't really know why I hang on to them other than that it's all I've got left of him other than photos and what he's instilled in us kids. I feel sometimes like a bird on a nest, tucking every precious scrap around me.



    

Of Scratches and Bad Patches

After the upheaval of the past few weeks, the calendar posted on the side of our refrigerator, all neatly demarcated boxes and penned-in times and places, looks like a quaint artifact, something out of Martha Stewart magazine ("March 17: Trace Irish roots to 10th century...March 20: Check the asparagus beds and rotate silk sock collection...").

What conceit, to write down all these plans and expect everything to fall neatly into place!

I'm not referring to the dreadful mudslide in Oso, Washington, which wiped out families and homes, dramatizing in terrible scale how the best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Our avalanche was one involving family members, hospitals, and future decisions, the sort of landslide that sweeps through every family from time to time.

Because these events kept us busy darting here and there in the car and making and keeping new appointments, there was little time for us all to attend to the ordinary, everyday chores and pleasures on the home front. This meant the dog wasn't walked, the cats weren't stroked, the house wasn't cleaned, and the horse wasn't visited.

Fortunately, the dog is patient, the cats forgiving, and the house can wait. The horse, however, needs care, and of course he was tended to, first in his current home and then the one he was moved to halfway through the crisis period.

But according to everybody tending to him, he certainly missed the Resident Teen, behaving in a generally  mopey way and not even biting people with his usual enthusiasm.

Before the schedule went haywire, the Resident Teen was dutifully attending to Avi's feet, which were suffering some of the maladies that Washington State horses are particularly prone to suffering during our long, wet, muddy winters: thrush and scratches.

"Thrush and Scratches" sounds like it would make a great name for a band, or perhaps a pair of guinea pigs. They are actually really annoying infections. Thrush is a bacterial or fungal infection of the frog of a horse's hoof that causes a foul-smelling discharge and rotting of tissue. Scratches (also called grease heel, cracked heel, dew poisoning, and mud fever) is a fungal infection of the horse's lower leg, with the fungus often being assisted in its evil encrustation of the skin by bacteria and mites.

Treatment for these maladies involves a lot of diligence, antiseptics, gauze, scab-picking, hoof-cleaning, and maintenance of dry conditions.

It's the Resident Teen (and, in our absence, her friends) who crouches on the floor to medicate Avi's soles, scrape off scabs, and pack his thrush-afflicted hoof with gauze pledgets, then wrap it in duct tape.

After years of taking care of the Resident Teen's head--cradling it when she was a newborn with a floppy neck, putting bonnets on it on sunny days, providing it with bicycle helmets and riding helmets--I don't think I will ever completely feel at ease seeing it lowered in the vicinity of a horse's hooves.

But she's got the practical experience I never had the chance to obtain, because she's been working with horses since she was about six years old, and with that experience comes confidence. I stick to observation and fascination.

And research...while the Resident Teen gets on with the useful task of clearing up the thrush and scratches, I putter about in old horse books so I can pester her with trivia.

An 1887 guide to horse care, for example, has a great deal to say about scratches. The author suggests poultices of linseed meal applied to the afflicted areas for several days, combined with purgative and diuretic medicines. Dressings sound like alchemists' dreams: they include ingredients such as acetate of lead, sulphate of zinc, and sulphate of iron. Pulverized gentian root, beeswax, scrapings of sweet elder, skunk oil, and lard figure into the recipes, too. One of the remedies is credited to "a drunken horse doctor" who cured the author's favorite horse, "old Turco."


A 1947 tome, The Book of the Horse, offers stern advice on stable management from the point of view of a long-ago Master of Fox Hounds, D. W. E. Brock. Brock does not mince words (for example, "One water-brush should last you three lifetimes," he admonishes, noting soon after that "The average groom is incapable of drying the heels thoroughly").

He doesn't offer specific advice on treating thrush or scratches, but he doesn't advocate mucking about trying to cure things that are better left to the veterinarian. Not just any vet, however: "Every vet may have the technical knowledge necessary to deal with a horse, but quite a number of them are more at home with poms in drawing rooms than with cantankerous thoroughbred horses in stables."

No need for a vet, in Avi's case--his feet are in good hands. So is the rest of his body--he moved to a new stable in the midst of all the turmoil, or actually back to the first one, where we met him, a calm, clean, and light-filled stable where he feels very much at home.

I'll never forget the look on his face when we and the Resident Teen walked up to the stable for the first time together after his move. He had his head and neck out the window of his stall and was chomping on hay. When he spied us--and his very own girl, in particular--he froze, ears pricked, like a horse in a storybook. He even stopped chewing and let the hay hang down like a Santa Claus beard.

Though the pesky fungi, bacteria, and mites took full advantage of the briefly opened window of opportunity that chaos provided, they are being routed thanks to the administrations of the Resident Teen and her friends. Other challenges will take more than scrapings of elder and sulphate of zinc to conquer, but will likewise be confronted and overcome with the help of others.

Solstice Rambles

It has been a long and emotionally wrenching year. Our most fervent hope is that, just as the shortest day of the year comes to a close and the hours of daylight gradually increase, life follows suit and brightens a bit more each week.

With that thought in mind, we decided to chuck all responsibilities while the Resident Teen was out of town with a friend's family, enjoying a snowy getaway up near the border, and just go wandering in our new neck of the woods.

But you know what they say about mice and their best laid plans. At first, Things Were Not Cooperating. We'd planned to center our outing on a visit to Sliders Cafe in Carnation, where Tony would bring his banjo and enjoy a bluegrass jam.

However, this goal was thwarted by the fact that, despite a chock-full calendar of events on the cafe's website, the forbidding news that it was closing down (which we'd learned a few weeks ago) came true, and instead of the bluegrass jam, yesterday was actually the Big Move-Out Day. Showing up with a banjo would've been just silly.

We decided to haul the dog with us and go for a walk in the Carnation area anyway, though I think partly the resident Banjo Player wanted to see for himself that Sliders actually was closed. Driving past the darkened building without a name on it anymore was a pretty good clue that it was.

"Hey, why don't we go to Remlinger Farms and get a pie for later?" suggested the disappointed musician. So we headed east, driving a route we took many times when the Resident Teen was a little one and a farm park with ponies, old-fashioned sweet rides, a fire truck to climb on, and baby goats to pet--with the promise of an ice cream cone before going home--was all that happiness required.

We knew the park would be closed, but thought perhaps the big produce and gift store would be open. We were wrong. No pie for us.

Well, at least we could go for a walk. Or could we? The first two pull-outs on the main road demanded that we have a Discover Pass to park there and set foot on the trail. Lacking said pass, we pushed farther south. And there we discovered a little gem that made all the dead-ends worth while: Tolt Macdonald Park and Campground.

The dog bounded out of the car (as much as she could bound with a leash around her neck) and nearly hyperventilated snuffing up all the rich new smells as we followed a path along the Tolt River. The river, roaring thunderously, galloped along like a herd of mustangs.

We hadn't walked for five minutes before we  heard the creaking cry of a bald eagle. It settled in a tree just ahead of us on the trail.

Across the river, its mate perched  near the enormous nest the two had maintained for years. Another walker told us they'd raised an eaglet there last year and she'd come every day to see the story unfold.

Another bit of walking took us to a curve in the trail where the Tolt joined forces with the Snoqualmie River. A suspension bridge over the roiling waters led to a lush green campground complete with yurts.

A cheerful sign warned us of the usual dangers to expect (oh, you know, little things like cougars and bears), but the only perils present were a pair of off-leash Doberman pinschers. I think Luna would've preferred the cougars and bears to the investigation she got from the Dobies.

As it was, she didn't appreciate walking across slats and having to spread her webbed Labrador toes wide, so she carefully walked like a trapeze artist on the little wooden "sidewalk" that ran down the middle of the bridge to facilitate rolling wheelbarrows full of camping gear across the river.

Finally, the low-lying white strips of cloud sank to ground level, creating that particularly Northwest variety of snow-globe-style drizzle.

Wet and muddy, we returned to the car, drove home, tidied up, and went out again, this time to Willows Lodge for an evening by a roaring fire complete with a glass of wine, a plate of antipasti, and thumping good music played by a young acoustic guitarist and his drum-playing friend. Christmas lights twinkled inside and out, laughing at the darkness of the longest night.

The Second Christmas

The pumpkins, which have all gone squishy, have been tossed into the garden-recycling bin. The cranberry sauce is gone, and the last of the turkey sandwiches, soup, and stir-fry has been eaten. Now, with the first day of Advent, we're easing ourselves into the Christmas season.

Last year, Christmas was a melancholy blur. It probably is for most families when they've lost a family member, particularly in that first year after their passing. For a long time there didn't seem to be any credible reason why plants should bother coming up, or any point to setting goals. Only the mechanics of day-to-day life and the push of responsibilities forced me to keep on any sort of track.

This summer, though, the resident teenager tentatively asked (treading carefully so as not to appear immune to my feelings) if Christmas this year could be a little bit more like it was in the past. And, of course, it will be. It is her time to enjoy the traditions we've relished for half a century and to renew them for us, as well.

Most of those traditions are the ones that take place in our home. The external ones seem to come and go. In some cases, the event itself disappears (for example, the wonderful Ballard North Pole, a beautifully decorated house we visited every year until the creators retired and moved to central Washington; the nerve!).

In others, the event goes on, but I go alone. Although the resident teen was delighted to receive a little paper Advent calendar--cheerfully reliving childhood by opening the door to peek at what was inside--she wasn't particularly psyched to tramp through the rain and go to see the reindeer and the camels visiting the local nursery for the Christmas season. For some strange reason this attraction doesn't have the same pull on a teen as it does on a three-year-old. Nor does strolling through a Merrie Olde Craft Faire or riding on a Santa Train.

OK, I don't go ride on the Santa Train by myself. I do have limits.

Last year the season of lights was dim for us. This year spirits are a bit brighter. We'll pull out the Advent house and hide a treat in each drawer. The tree will go up, bearing ornaments new and old, many with a story to tell. The manger scene, the old toys, the Christmas village will all be in place. Stockings will be hung by the chimney with care.

There will be memories (and though I am grateful for them, they can also skewer me with pangs of despair and bitterness; I think perhaps that only those who can see the Thestrals completely understand that even beautiful memories of missing loved ones are not soft, woolly blankets that muffle all pain).

Despite ourselves, we will all  be laughing; the lights will twinkle, the candles will flicker.

In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night . . . And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. 

--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"

Trip to England, Part 7: Horse Heaven

Whenever we go on a trip, two of the three people in our little family start off by scheming ways of shoehorning horses into the itinerary. (Hint: Both of these people lack a Y chromosome.)

This habit goes back a long way. My benevolent parents always tried to match up our interests with activities on trips, so there was often a chance for me to sit on some sighing pony and trudge in a circle or go on a trail ride.

As an adult, my first trip with my future husband took us down the eastern seaboard to Chincoteague, where we visited the wild ponies of Assateague Island, whom legend says are the descendants of ponies that struggled to land long ago when a Spanish galleon wrecked offshore.

When we got to Ocracoke Island, a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina, and learned that this location also boasted wild ponies whom legend says are the descendants of ponies that struggled to land long ago when a Spanish galleon wrecked offshore, it was difficult to convince him that I wasn't actually selecting destinations solely on their supply of wild ponies whom legend says (see above).

But this time the horses were out of the gate before we even cracked open the first guidebook. As luck would have it, my brother-in-law's right-hand-man, a wonderful fellow who is a jack of all trades and master of them all, was partnered with a woman who runs a beautiful stable that's home to, oh, merely about 90 horses or so--most of them boarders but some of them belonging to the stable's riding school.

Not only that, but they love teenagers--and so my daughter had an open invitation to ride there and groom, muck out, and generally indulge in all things horsy whenever she wanted. To top it off, the place was right next door to where we were staying.

Giddy-up!

A busy schedule prevented me from grabbing any real-horse experiences for myself, but England offered plenty of equine opportunities even without saddling up.

For starters, we weren't there 24 hours before we met this strapping fellow, who I think is a Gypsy Vanner, gazing down on us from a field above my sister-in-law's daycare facility. Not sure if he gives sensitive children nightmares.

Two days later we took up residence in a lovely dwelling right next door to these two characters: a pair of Falabella ponies, a bay stallion named Jimmy and a leopard-spotted gelding named Zog. Here they're relaxing after a hard morning's work grazing.

Real horses were scarcer in London (I had hoped to catch the Horse Guards parade but it was not to be), but there were stone and bronze horses ancient and new to spare.  Such as Pyrois, Eos, Aethon, and Phlegon, the four horses of the Greek sun god Helios, taking a break from their job of hauling the sun across the sky to stampede through Piccadilly Circus (this one is...oh, take your pick):

Equally plunging, snorty, and fiery are the horses hauling the chariot of British tribal queen Boadicea, someone who didn't take any guff from the ancient Romans. This statue guards an area near Westminster Pier in London.

In a city heavily populated by statues of noble steeds bearing commanding figures on their backs, it was fun to spot this fellow, officially known as "Powerless Structures, Fig 101," perched on a stand in Trafalgar Square that was once meant to support one of those horse-and-rider memorials. The statue was never put up, however, and so other artworks rotate into place on the stand instead.

The British Museum is likewise packed with horses, with and without riders or chariots. The head below is one of a team that pulled moon goddess Selene's chariot. It's a favorite of ours because we photographed our daughter next to it when she was 6, and she beamed at it as if it were her own pony. At age 14, however, she posed reluctantly, several feet away, with half-lidded eyes and a smirk. The horse's expression, of course, has not changed since the days of ancient Greece.

Prancing across a vast hall in the same museum is this marble horse and rider from ancient Rome. Apparently marble heroes on horseback weren't a common sight in Roman times, so this duo is a rarity.

The British Museum also had a special exhibit about horses in place, called "The Horse from Arabia to Royal Ascot," stuffed with paintings and other artifacts from equine history. A wonderful bonus to this stroll through horse history was that I enjoyed it in the company of an author/bookseller who writes one of my favorite blogs, Books, Mud, and Compost. And Horses.

Oddly, although one could snap photos of horsy bits and bobs all over the museum, it was forbidden to take pictures in this special exhibit, much to my dismay. Likewise, you couldn't take pictures in the exhibit "Animal Inside Out" at London's Natural History Museum, which featured a stunning horse's head that appears woven from the slender threads of its capillaries--a blood-red mirror image of the head of Selene's horse. So I had to swipe this image from the exhibit's web page.

The most amazing horse's head, however, was one we glimpsed from the top deck of a bus as we whooshed past the Marble Arch. I would've loved to have been on foot and taken a picture of this 30-foot sculpture, which was created by sculptor Nic Fiddian and is called Marwari Horse at Water.(Image source here.)

But the best horsies of all were the ones we had a picnic with in their paddock. Well, we didn't set out to have a picnic in their paddock; we were just having a picnic, and the ponies,  Jimmy and Zog, invited themselves. As did a small flock of sheep and two dogs. The dogs begged for tidbits only with their eyes, and the sheep kept their distance, but the ponies were plenty assertive in their efforts to eat anything on the table, including hamburgers and sausages.

Things My Father Taught Me

My dad, like all good fathers, taught me a great many useful things. Some of the lessons were the large-scale kind, of course--the ones passed along mainly by example, such as being honest and considerate, respecting others, not taking more than your share, always doing your best work, responsibility, and the like. I certainly don't really remember Dad telling me those things, though, or informing  me outright how to live an honorable life.

It's the small bits of information that I remember him passing along--recalling not only the advice but also the setting and the timbre of his voice, the sorts of things that you'd think would stick in your mind if someone were imparting words of eternal wisdom rather than a snippet of a suggestion.

Most of them are things that sound silly when described, but like photographs they stir up memories and let them unspool, revealing their contents again and again like the fragments of movies that they are.

Silly things like teaching me how to make scrambled eggs, how to keep tumbling them in the pan with a spatula and take them out when they still had a sheen to them. Teaching me how to make a superior paper airplane by notching the wings and weighing down the nose. Showing me how to hammer a nail, start a car with a flooded engine, and peer along the edge of a board to judge how straight and flat is is. Instructing me in how to make a fist if I needed to defend myself, making sure I knew to keep my thumb outside my fingers and not tucked inside them lest I sock someone and in the process break my thumb. (I remember being impressed that I had such potential power, though now I know it's highly unlikely I'd ever exert enough force to sprain my thumb, let alone break it.)

Most vivid is my memory of Dad teaching me how to find Polaris, the North Star.

We stepped into the front yard on a balmy summer night, the kind of night when the air feels silken. Fireflies flashed silently in the grass, the shrubs, the sky. Dad pointed out the shape of the Big Dipper, wheeling slowly through space scooping up stars. He traced the line between the two stars forming one side of the dipper and then extended that line so that it pointed to Polaris and explained how the distance between the two dipper stars, when multiplied about five times, was equivalent to the distance to Polaris.

That's about where he lost me. As soon as he pointed out the pole star, my head was wobbling like a bobblehead toy's as I tried to relocate the Big Dipper. Then, we'd sort out the Big Dipper again, track the stars to Polaris, and immediately I'd lose the dipper again.

He must have felt a bit desperate after a while, and I was getting exasperated and saying things like "how am I supposed to find the stupid North Star if I can't find the stupid Big Dipper?" Because suddenly he squatted down to my level and said, "Look. See the corner of the roof?"

I looked up. Yes, there was the corner of the roof. I nodded.

"OK. So now look just a little bit to the right of that corner, and up a bit. You see that star? That's the North Star."

"I see it! I see it!" I squealed triumphantly.

Pleased, Dad said, "OK. So now you know that you can always find the North Star. It'll always just be off that corner of the house."

I was extremely pleased to know this, that this star was fixed in space, at least for a while, adjacent to our roof.

Dad paused for a few seconds. Then he added, "So. In the future, if you're ever lost in the front yard, you'll be able to find your way home using the North Star."

I think one reason I remember this little scene so vividly is that, even though I was only little, I fully appreciated the the absurdity of my ever getting lost in the front yard of our suburban home or looking at my house to orient myself to the North Star so I could find my house.

I can still see Dad, his head thrown back, eyes squinting, a broad grin on his face as he shared a deep, rumbling laugh. I laughed with him, somehow knowing that this was a different kind of laughter than the sort tickled out of you by somebody doing something funny. It was shared laughter, the kind of laughter we'd enjoy many more times over the decades to come.

In writing this blog entry, I didn't set out to equate my Dad with the North Star, but as I savor this memory of him I realize that he was (is) indeed pole star in my life. Missing him this year and a half since his passing is very much like looking up at that corner of the house again and again even though I know he won't be in that fixed place just to the right and up a little bit.

Sometimes I feel terrible that I can't remember more. What happened to all the conversations we had? Why can't I recall all the words? I felt a bit relieved when I read Joan Didion's account of losing her husband, The Year of Magical Thinking, and came across a passage in which she despaired at not remembering the content of all their many talks. If Didion couldn't remember, either, then perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself.

One tidbit of Dad's advice, however, came with an artifact attached. He was working in the basement one day, building something (he was always building something), and chatting with me as I hung around. Then he chuckled at something in the palm of his hand before tossing it to me. It was a yellow square of wood, about an inch square, from the end of a yardstick.

"Know what that is?" he said. "That's a one-inch fixer-upper." If one failed to observe the rule "measure twice, cut once" and found that a project wasn't fitting together properly, it might need something like a shim stuck into it to make it right. The technical term for this item, he observed, was a one-inch fixer-upper.

I never seem to have a one-inch fixer-upper when I need one, but I still do have that one-inch fixer-upper. It appears randomly (unlike the North Star, it does not appear to be fixed in space) when I am tidying a closet or sorting a drawer or moving things in the basement. "So that's where it went," I'll think before losing it once again. But every time it appears, it's as if Dad is winking and sharing a laugh with me again.