The Last Thing He Told Me

“Gotta pick a piece of wood,” I said. “It all starts with picking a good piece of wood. If that’s no good, you have nowhere good to go.”

“How do you woodturners pick?” he said.

“We woodturners go about it in different ways,” I said. “My grandfather worked with maple primarily. He loved the coloring, loved how the grains would turn themselves out. But I use a variety of woods. Oak, pine, maple.”

“What’s your favorite kind of wood to work with?” he asked.

“I don’t play favorites,” I said.

“Oh, good to know.”

I shook my head, biting back a smile. “If you’re going to make fun of me…” I said.

He put his hands up in surrender. “I’m not making fun of you,” he said. “I’m fascinated.”

“Okay, well then, without sounding corny, I think different pieces of wood appeal to you for different reasons,” I said.

He moved over to my work area, bent down so he was eye to eye with my largest lathe.

“Is that my first lesson?”

“No, the first lesson is that to pick an interesting piece of wood to work with, you need to understand that good wood is defined by one thing,” I said. “My grandfather used to say that. And I think that is definitely true.”

He rubbed his hand along the piece of the pine I was working with. It was a distressed pine—dark in color, rich for a pine.

“What defines this guy?” he said.

I placed my hand over a spot in the middle, blanched to almost a blond, totally washed out.

“I think this part, right here, I think it could turn out interesting,” I said.

He put his hand there too, not touching my hand, not trying—only trying to understand what I was showing him.

“I like that, I like that philosophy, is what I mean…” he says. “I kind of think you could probably say the same thing about people. At the end of the day, one thing defines them.”

“What defines you?” I said.

“What defines you?” he said.

I smiled. “I asked you first.”

He smiled back at me. He smiled, that smile.

“Okay, fine,” he said. Then he didn’t hesitate, not for a second. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter.”

Sometimes You Can Go Home Again

We sit on the tarmac, waiting for the plane to take off. Bailey stares out the window. She looks exhausted—her eyes dark and puffy, her skin a splotchy red. She looks exhausted and she looks scared.

I haven’t told her everything yet. But she understands enough. She understands enough that I’m not surprised she is scared. I’d be surprised if she weren’t.

“They’ll come visit,” I say. “Nicholas and Charlie. They can bring your cousins if you want. I think that would be a nice thing. I think your cousins really want to meet you.”

“They won’t stay with us or anything?” she says.

“No. Nothing like that. We’ll have a meal or two together. Start there.”

“And you’ll be there?”