When I was 7, I remember walking into my parents’ room to ask my dad for a shirt that I could wear as a nightgown. He pulled out a t-shirt he had gotten from his work. It was a Cowboys “jersey” with the number 8 on it. (Jersey is in quotation marks because it’s just a regular t-shirt that happens to say Cowboys and have an 8 on it.)
I happily wore it to bed that night and when my mom would do the laundry, I would quickly offer to help fold so that I could make sure the shirt went into my pile each time. I don’t know if my dad intended to lose his Cowboys shirt forever that night, but it was certainly my intention to keep it forever.
I still have it. I still wear it to bed occasionally, but I recognize that it has been many years since I was 7 and the shirt may disintegrate at any moment. It’s comforting to know that I have it and to remember innocently asking to borrow it. It’s a nice memory to think about a time when I was safe and loved and my dad was alive and well and I was small enough to wear his t-shirt and have it go past my knees.
When I was 10, I helped my dad build a fence in our backyard. I think about my own children and realize now that I probably wasn’t that helpful, but I was so excited to help build that fence. I would hold the nails as my dad would hammer them into the wood. I was so happy to help that I didn’t even stop when my dad hammered my thumb instead of a nail. I was far too overwhelmed with the pain to appreciate the joke potential.
(“You were supposed to hammer the wood nail, not my thumbnail!” That would have been golden. Unfortunately, opportunity lost due to great big 10-year-old tears.)
But I wasn’t allowed to give up. Shit happens, life goes on. We kept working on that fence.
That might have been the first time I built something with my dad, but it definitely wasn’t the last. The amount of Ikea furniture I put together with that man…I could not tell you. My stepmom loves a good Ikea find, and I loved helping my dad put it together.
The downside of Ikea, however, is that the furniture does not move very well, and my dad and my stepmom moved every few years. So, my dad and I would find ways to keep the Ikea furniture still standing. Lots more nails, but luckily no more injuries. By this time, I had learned not to be the holder of the nails while my dad hammered, but to take the hammer myself.
I loved helping my dad with stuff, even into adulthood. Hanging pictures, banging furniture back together, etc. When I lived in my first house, it was only a 20 minute walk from my dad’s. Before we moved in we wanted to paint everything and hang pictures, so I borrowed a bunch of stuff from my dad. Including that infamous hammer. The hammer that had destroyed my thumb. The hammer that had put together countless Ikea bookshelves. The hammer that hung my stepmom’s paintings in the most uneven and aesthetically heartbreaking attempt at a line.
I never gave the hammer back. Not because I intended to steal it, exactly, but because I needed a hammer. I only thought about the hammer when I needed it, and every time I would think to myself “Oh I need to remember to give this back” but then I would be done with my task and the hammer would be forgotten again. He never asked for it back and truthfully, he probably forgot about it. It’s just a hammer, after all.
After my dad died, my stepmom gave my sister and me a few of his old things. She gave me a puffy denim jacket that had been around forever. It is straight out of the early 90s and I can still picture him wearing it. The sleeves are fraying but it’s still in my front closet. I still wear it when I’m slipping out quickly or going into the garage. It’s falling apart and like the Cowboys t-shirt it’s only a matter of time before it crumbles completely. But it was my dad’s and now it’s mine and because of that it is the most valuable jacket I own.
These are the three things of my dad’s that I have. A t-shirt, a hammer, and a jacket.
I try not to use the jacket and the t-shirt too much, because I know they have a limited lifespan and we’ve already gone way past it. The hammer, though…I use it. I keep it with my tools.
(YES I have tools…I may be able to count on my fingers how many tools I have, but I do have some.)
It’s a very distinguishable hammer. It looks like it’s as old as I am, and it probably is. It has a wooden handle with some kind of gloss over it. It fits in very nicely with the 90s jacket and t-shirt. It’s definitely a time-stamped theme.
When I need to hang a picture, I use my dad’s hammer. Or…at least I did use my dad’s hammer.
You lived here just over a year. It isn’t like you were here for 30 years and you can’t remember what was yours and what was mine, or what we bought together. You were here for a year. You know what’s yours and what isn’t. You know that this hammer, which clearly came from a different century, isn’t yours. What’s worse is that you know how much that stupid hammer means to me. You know about the hammer, and the jacket, and the t-shirt. And you know that that’s all I have left. And you took the hammer.
I know you took a lot of things that didn’t belong to you. You took my safe, even though you didn’t know the combination. You took another little lockbox of mine…do you at least have the keys for that one? You took my measuring tape, my favourite pipe, spray paint, Izzy’s tablet. My set of darts. That pretty little box my sister gave me for my birthday a few years ago. My heating pad. My snow shovel. The cat food lid, even. I mean, you even took the dog I paid for and didn’t let me or the girls say goodbye to him.
I’m not surprised at this point. I am realizing more and more every day that the person I miss isn’t you. I miss the person who liked doing online school with my girls. I miss the person who would send me funny updates throughout the day of things the kids said or did. I miss the person who took them into the garage to make structures with spare wood. I miss the person who took them to the park or tobogganing. I miss the person who made them breakfast so I could get ready in the mornings. I miss the person who would laugh with me for hours. I miss the person who would talk to me about their life, who would share things with me.
I’m realizing that I didn’t know that person for very long. Most of our relationship I spent trying to find that person again. But I’m not your therapist, and I’m not your mother, and you aren’t the person I thought you were. Anyone can wear a mask for a couple of months.
But I would really like my hammer back.
Thirty Something 