My father always had a box of tools. I remember the first one, smooth dark-grey metal with a single metal clasp to hold it shut. It didn’t have a place for a padlock but back then he didn’t need a real toolbox because we lived in Grandpa’s house and his garage was full of tools. Often, on a quiet summer afternoon, I would slip into that garage and would walk down the steps to the workbench and put wood blocks in the heavy metal vice bolted there and test how strong its grip could be, while other days would find me sifting through some thirty tiny plastic drawers, each with a different type of bolt, nut, or screw inside, wondering what could be built with such a collection. And rare, but not enough to forget, there were times I’d pause and watch the sunlight come through a window and turn into solid rays of yellow as it cut through the dust-filled air. Then I would shiver in the dry heat, feeling a call from that creative space, and I would imagine all that I could do with a life. Some sense of purpose stirred within me, beside all those tools.
My father worked very hard, harder than most fathers. He owned a business, Computerlife Inc., which should have made him millions because he worked so hard. On Saturdays, especially during the summer, he would take me to his work in the basement of a silent building surrounded by warehouses. He would show me the tools he used to fix computer monitors: soldering iron, current meter, and more screwdrivers than I could hold in two hands. He would tell me every time, “Don’t touch the soldering iron, it’s heating up,” and I would stay close and wait to see him lift it like a metal pen in his hand. He would touch tip of the iron to the metal on a green computer board until he could mop it up with a brush like an archeologist cleaning a fossil. Then he would touch the board again with the iron and solder wire and lay a clean, silver-colored line just where it needed to be. Once, when I came close to see better, he stopped and explained that the smoke from the solder wire is poisonous and I shouldn’t get to close. He must have held his breath. Besides the soldering iron, I did not watch him work but roamed the empty corridors, imagining myself into a world far from green computer boards.
Eventually my father bought a house and we lived there instead of Grandpa’s. This house was small because my father still worked alone in that silent basement. If he had not worked alone, we might have had a larger house. There was a plywood shed behind it and my father had us help him clean it out. He bought a new tool box and many new tools for all the things he promised he would fix. My brothers and I could use the tools too, as long as we asked, and sometimes, if we were going about it all wrong, he would help us create. During the summers we made everything from spice shelves to ladders. Once, we decided to bolt a makeshift backboard to the shed and Dad surprised us by buying a rim and net to go with it. He must have been as excited as we were.
One summer brought a grand undertaking. The tree in the back by the fence split from one trunk into three at about five feet off the ground. My brother and I studied it—mainly by climbing over every inch of it—and determined that we could place a board between each of the three trunks, in shape of a triangle, on which we could build a platform. Despite our quiet proactivity, out mother began to ask what it was we meant to do with all those nails.
“We’re building a treehouse!”
She was less impressed than anticipated. “Okay,” She said drawing out the “ay” while she thought of what to say next, “You need to have your father look at it.”
After days of incessant reminding, my father walked back with us to the project. He looked at the half-finished platform for a few seconds and said, “These nails are not going to work. Neither of you are allowed to get up there until we put bolts in.”
My chest—it had been slightly swollen with pride—fell and I turned to my brother. We exchanged a familiar look of defeat; we would have to wait. My father did not compromise on these matters.
We continued to remind him, but our hope began to evaporate steadily into the dry summer air. It was my mother who pulled through in the end; she could not stand our one dimensional conversations any longer.
“Good. Now you can go pick up those bolts the boys want,” she said after he finished fixing the dishwasher.
Father had plenty of friends inside the hardware store. The owner was the bishop at the church by Grandpa’s house before we moved. He would always shake my father’s hand and ask about our family. While Dad looked for bolts my brother and I escaped to explore the endless rows of metal and plastic. I always spent paused the longest by the chains; there was something permanent about their ability to connect. This time, I imagined a prisoner bound in them and soon I was lost in a story that answered all the questions, Who?, Why? and Where?
My brother found me and told me that we were leaving.
When we arrived home, my father took us to the shed. “This is the drill bit you need and this is the long extension cord,” he said and handed one to each of us. My brother complained and tried to grab the drill from me just as I gave it a spin.
“Hey!” he shouted and jumped back.
My father snatched the drill from me. “I’ll drill the holes.”
We measured the distance between the trunks carefully and Father made marks on the bark with a pencil. My brother and I watched as he drilled, paused, and second guessed himself in smooth rotation. One after another, he bolted the boards to the tree; then his body relaxed and we knew it was safe.
He had us climb up so he could pass boards to us. We laid them down side by side across the triangle between the trunks until we could walk between all three trunks, ten feet above the ground. My father came up last with a hammer and nails, warning us as he came to stay away from the edges because the boards weren’t anchored yet.
My brother got to hammer first and I looked around our yard with the park beside it, imagining what this platform would become in the stories that filled our summer days. Suddenly, the world slowed—a hammer blow ringing long and loud in my ears. I tried to turn toward my father as the platform began to tilt but I was too slow. I watched as time doubled and one side of the platform fell, dumping my father and brother onto the ground. I slid down the boards sitting and hit the ground just before three of them fell on me.
I did not pause to worry about anyone else before running into the house, crying from shock. My mother met me in the kitchen and though she hugged me and comforted me, she did not cry. My father and brother followed in relative serenity and I stopped crying as the preceding events were analyzed in full. I talked of nothing but my slow-motion experience; it was the first time I had been in such an accident and the effects of adrenaline fascinated me. My brother remembered nothing but red—the color of my father’s shirt—while my father recounted his thoughts and mid-air maneuvers as he tried to avoid landing on my brother.
My father’s hands and forearms were cut when he braced himself against a pile of scrap metal to avoid crushing my brother beneath him. He did not heal as quickly as my brother and I did and his bandages lingered longer than the novelty of the story.
We fixed the treehouse again. Many councils, clubs, prisoners, and parties were held on that platform, ten feet above the ground. As the years passed, I found myself climbing onto that treehouse and watching the movement of the world around me. Birds built nests, lightning struck, and cool summer breezes washed over me, all from the view in the tree.
My father still has his tools and sometimes, when he gets a new one, I ask him what he’ll use it for. More than his face, the tools hold stories.
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