“If you keep it. You will always have it.”
Words recently passed on to me by my mother. Passed through
generations. Passed to my mother by her mother. It’s a simple thought easily
discarded as elementary, superfluous, redundant. But I can’t stop thinking
about the plain wisdom underneath it. How it is applicable to all facets of
life.
A couple weeks ago I was at a family reunion, a gathering that happens
every 22 years for our immediate family. We are spread literally across
countries and continents. The fact that we are able to be in the same place
at the same time is nothing short of miraculous. When I arrived my Mum asked me
if I could build her a small bench for the front porch. In the back corner of
the basement were some old pine boards from bookshelves my parents had been
carrying around for over 40 years. I remembered the bookshelves vividly from my
childhood. I remembered the books on English literature, Renaissance art, and
Greek myths standing upright on the mahogany stained shelves. The shelves
crossed state and country borders with our family. House to house they found a
space against a wall. Until finally finding themselves stacked upright in the
basement. Kept but presumably unnecessary. Their house is much smaller than the
houses we used to live in and many of the books have been passed on to other
bookshelves in other households.
Using my father’s and grandfather’s tools I went to work in
the little driveway beside the house. Spending a couple hours each day on the
project. Jointing edges with a Skil saw and block plane. I’ve grown reliant on
table saws, planers, jointers, shapers, router tables, Japanese chisels, etc.,
so it may not be my prettiest work. The point wasn’t to make an exquisite piece
of furniture. It was to create something simple and functional out of something
that had always been simple and functional. Create it from something that had
been kept by my family and now would continue to be kept. Because,
“If you keep it…”
