My father might have taught me that, or my mother. They both knew how to fix things. They also knew when to find someone else to fix what they couldn't.
This morning, my oven wouldn't self-clean -- it beeped insistently and told me F2. I looked it up online, thinking I might be able to fix it. Overheating, scarily so. I threw the breaker switches and called a professional.
Later, irritated by the wobbling bedside table my father made for me at least thirty years ago, I determined to fix it, grabbed the Phillips head, and flipped the table upside down. But when I saw the X marks (always a fat pencil, always drawn, never rubbed out) and the punched initials (why twice, I wonder), I hesitated and reached for a camera.
I couldn't fix the wobbles -- either the one setting the table off balance, or the one sin me caused by father's Xs, reminding me of his shop, tools, hands, marks.
I worked on one thing and something else resulted.
There's nothing more to say.
