Give Me the Pieces

Some nights, after supper, my daddy would change from his street clothes and spend the evening in his workshop.
It wasn't much - a long workbench with a vise at one end, and shelves for his tools at the other - hammers and saws and screw drivers and little bottles of different sized nails. He puttered mostly in solitude, humming along to the portable radio he kept on the window sill for company. He repaired small things - a broken clock, a loose table leg, a drawer that wouldn't open. And he tinkered with the electric train set that he had so carefully set up and painstakingly maintained. We all have our places of refuge - mine was the library, his was a cold, damp corner of the basement.

If my mother was out, I would sit on the cellar steps and watch him through the railing. I brought him broken toys and dolls with broken limbs, stuffed animals with missing eyes, a domino set that needed repainting. He would patiently repair what he could and explain why when he couldn't. He still smoked in those days and carried his matches and Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket and I can see him bent over the vise, smoke circling around his head as he concentrated on his work. He was somewhere in his forties then with a full head of dark hair, clear blue eyes, and a slight resemblance to Henry Fonda. He had an unusually kind face and a gentle, peace-seeking nature but the weariness of his marriage had left it's marks and he often struck people as a quiet man carrying an endless sadness.

The cellar workshop had become his quiet time, his escape from the world of work and the duties of family, his private space. I was too young to understand the value of quiet time for adults but I sensed the need of it in him and tried not to intrude. Rusty, our old and much scarred orange tomcat, would drift in and take his place at the tool end of the workbench and there the three of us would be with public radio playing in the background and the electric train running it's course under the stairs.

Give me the pieces,
and I will restore it,
Put it together again.

Don't be dishearted,
and please don't discard it,
for it will be better than ever, my friend.

Lindy Hearne