Single Parenting-1

When I was very young, my grandfather took me with him to work on the house he was helping finish for my uncle. I remember we were working on flooring. Apparently, I wasn't much help, however, because he ushered me back home a few hours later, with an admonition in his heavily accented English that I would have to try a lot harder if I was ever going to learn to do anything useful in this world.

By "anything," he meant practical things, like carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, mechanical skills. He'd come to this country as a tool-and-die worker, and most of our extended family had solid working class skills. Most of them, like him, ended up working in the auto industry in and around Detroit.

My father was much more patient with me when we worked on projects together. But, over the years, I proved to be a slow learner in this regard. I also realized that if I hesitated when I was unsure what to do, my extremely kind father would step in and do the work himself, all the while instructing me over and over, perhaps never seeing that I had already hit my ceiling in pragmatism.

We worked on our own cars in Michigan; everyone did. I watched as Dad took apart a carburetor and then put it back together and reinstall it in our car. When he was done, he had a few random parts left over, but he said, "If it works, we won't worry about it."

It worked.

***

Years later, here in San Francisco, I tried to work on the first of several 1966 Volvo-S cars I owned. They were reputably the easiest cars to work on ever, and came with helpful owner's manuals. Ours needed a water pump. I took everything apart, just like I remembered Dad doing; then I installed the new water pump, put everything else back in place; and, not surprisingly, a couple parts were left over, with no obvious place to put them.

"If it works," I assured my wife, "we won't worry about it."

Confidently, I fired up the engine and drove forward a few meters, but -- kaboom! -- the fan tore into the radiator and water starting spewing everywhere. The car coughed to a stop.

My first wife proved to be immensely skilled in practical matters, out of desperate necessity. I consoled myself that at least I could write, more or less, and earn money, most of the time. But it was better for everyone if I didn't try to assemble the things we bought, or fix the things that broke, or attempt to build something from scratch.

***

Yesterday, I bought my younger three kids a stand-alone basketball hoop & backboard unit at a local store. "Is it hard to assemble?" I asked the salesman. "Not if you're handy," he replied. "You look like you are handy."

Appearances truly must be misleading.

We spent almost all of the rest of this weekend putting this confounded thing together, my three little assistants and I. They acquired an entire new repertoire of blue language, as I made mistake after mistake; had to take things apart and put them together again, sometimes over and over.

By the end, just when we thought we had it nailed, my 11-year-old son pointed out that I had installed the hoop backwards. All three burst into hysterical giggles, which upset me more than I can explain, though I kept these feelings private. In any event, this outcome necessitated another long ordeal, with all three of them helping now, concerned looks on their faces, whenever they weren't suppressing their giggles.

During this long, strange weekend, I regretted again losing my latest partner, because she is so good at stuff like this. She stepped in repeatedly these past two years to assemble things, fix things, patiently trouble-shoot problems. She has a real talent for this, although computers do frustrate her and make her a tad angry on occasion.

I don't know that I ever properly explained to her how grateful I was for her common sense and logical skill at figuring all of these things out for me. It was one of the reasons I easily concluded that we were a perfect fit, although, obviously, that was strictly from my point-of-view, not hers.

I also miss the presence of my oldest son, who from an early age, probably 8, took me under his wing to fix my VCRs, telephone answering machines, and so forth, whenever they broke, or rather whenever I made them mess up. He's on the road right now, driving his mother across the country to her new home in Washington, D.C. Maybe when he comes back, he can help me figure out what to do with all of these parts leftover in our backyard. I'm a little worried this contraption could fall down, and I sincerely doubt the company that made it included so many extra parts just out of sloppiness or kindness toward the consumer.

Do you see, kind reader, where I am going here? My three young children rely on me, defend me, and believe in me as only young children can do. They probably already realize that in many ways, I am so incompetent as to be laughable; but they are still too young and kind (or maybe scared) to speak that out loud. But teenagerhood beckons, and anyway, I always tell them how unskilled I am, usually while apologizing for calling mere inanimate objects names that would make sailors blush.

The current facts, as near as I can tell, are that this basketball unit still stands at this hour in our backyard, despite six hours of almost constant use and abuse by my small would-be Michael Jordans.

It's too soon to say, but maybe I learned something from my Dad, after all? Or, maybe, as we say in baseball, it's better to be lucky than good.