Healing is never too late

Hi All,

I just had something rather strange and beautiful happen. It's a little convoluted of a tale to tell, but I need to write it out for myself so thought I'd pass it on. Healing happens at the oddest moments and in the strangest most unexpected ways.

When I was in my early 20's, my father pulled his 20 foot travel trailer into my yard and lived with me one summer. We were both practicing alcoholics at the time and together we created a pretty large mountain of empty beer cans. This was back in the early 70's and recycling and bottle deposits weren't yet in fashion. My father and I did not have a healthy relationship... ever. He and my mom divorced when I was really young and he remained detached from me to the point of apathy. All I ever wanted as a boy and then a young man was his respect and love, but I could never make any kind of connection. He was a carpenter and I wanted so badly for him to show me how to build things with wood and use his power tools but he always treated me like I was too stupid to learn anything. One time he got his lady friend's son a trainee job working along side him instead of giving it to me... It really hurt.

One day I got tired of all the beer cans. I had so many empty cans that they filled an old 5 x 9 covered trailer that was sitting out back to the ceiling. Anyway, I took this heavy old wood mallet of my dad's and began smashing the cans flat one by one and turning them into little squatty discs. With one big stroke of the mallet I smashed each can flat into a convenient size to get rid of. I had been at it for hours when my father came home. I told him what I was doing and all he did was shake his head in disgust and tell me that I had ruined his wooden mallet. Later on he told me that his father had given it to him and that his grandfather had given it to his father. He, my great grandfather had made it out of part of a wagon wheel that was from an oxen cart that he drove across the USA when he was among the earliest Mormon pioneers to settle into the Salt Lake area in Utah in about 1850 or so. To me at the time it just looked like an old junky wooden mallet of no value. Something that someone would knock together and throw away when they were done with it. After I was done smashing the cans the faces of it were all dented up and the edges of the faces were splintering and chipping off. It was one ragged looking old tool when I was done. I felt really bad about the whole affair and it reinforced not only my personal shame and low self-esteem, but the resentments I held for my father.

I ended up with that old mallet after my father passed away. I use it from time to time but the dents and damage on it tend to mark up whatever I use it on. Mostly I keep it hanging on the wall because it is very old and it served 3 generations of craftsmen in my family. I have it up on display over my wood lathe with several other antique carpentry tools that were passed down to me the same way.

Tonight as I was cleaning my workshop I grabbed that old wooden mallet and took it to the belt sander and dressed it up proper. Don't know why I never thought of doing this before. It just came upon me all of a sudden that I could fix a 30 year old mistake and smooth out the faces and re-square it up, and make it a nice wood working tool again... Oh, it's a size smaller than it would have been but no one will ever know. It looks fine... even beautiful to my eyes. My father has been gone for several years but somehow tonight, alone in my workshop amongst all my woodworking tools, I have set something rather important right... Something that is much deeper than that old mallet... some small something between my dad and me, and it felt really good.

Love, Dave