“Beautiful. Single piece?”
Allen’s fingers passed lightly over the box, reading edges and texture with reverence. His hands, gnarled and scarred by decades of tight grips and tool slips, cradled and gently rotated my work, pausing as our waitress appeared.
“I’ll have the Reuben please. With fries.” And a wry smile.
He’s in his mid-80s, and our wives surely imagine us to be poor influences. I indulge his endless collection of raw material in our little New England town, wielding my chainsaw and loading up rented trailers with sectioned remains of fallen hardwoods, and he tempts my dietary restrictions.
“Greek salad. With grilled chicken.” Slight frown.
The dark tracers of spalting on the underside of the lid appear as mountains reaching to a wispy, western skyline, a melanized memory of where two fungal colonies fought to a draw.
I had only hope when I found the discarded chunk of maple in a pile. A crotch section where the trunk gave way to primary branches that once shaded someone’s yard, near impossible to split for burning, already giving way to nature’s digestive forces.
There would be many hours of transport, chainsawing, end-sealing and months of dark isolation in a paper grocery bag immersed in the shavings of previous projects before I would begin.
The deep hues washing over knot grain and pith, abutting the contrasts of fibers bleached and softened by decay had taken decades to emerge. Mother’s Day was approaching. My chisels were now on the clock.
The bandsaw and planer had squared, smoothed, and dutifully severed a half-inch slice that would become the top of the jewelry box, revealing a 9″ x 6″ undulating canvas. Black wax etched a landscape of foothills and ridges, beckoning the excavation of hollows that would shelter a small selection of earrings, bracelets and necklaces.
The clutch plates of the pipe clamp held in the jaws of an articulating vice buttressed one end and the twisting jaw crank slowly squeezed until the maple block no longer needed support. Suspending the work in open space, an accidental discovery from wrangling unwieldy burls, enables perspective. Simple adjustments can raise, lower, rotate and alter the approach angle to the surface, fusing the needs of tool, texture and technician.
I crouched, hovered, tapped and bathed the grain in the light of my hiking headlamp. We were ready to begin.
A bystander might liken the process to dentistry. Arrayed on the bench, unraveled rolls of honed chisels, gouges, sweeps, knives, rasps and weathered scraps of sandpaper. In the hours of excavation, I alternate from sitting to standing, removing and replacing instruments called to meet the shape of the moment. And everywhere shavings.
There is both mania and magic in the revelation of a tree’s inner life. A tiny blemish may be the tip of nature’s creative flourish, radials and arcs, waves and whimsical patterns rise and fall with measured tearing force.
Progress slowed across a tract of dense, rose-tinged core wood asking more of my forearms. Then the blade passed over a starkly beautiful transition to a pulpy, cream-colored swale where the fibrous lignin had been consumed by fungus.
Biting, short-lived curls gave way to a deep trough. The sweep obeyed my hand and took a chunk out of the sidewall.
The pace of AI had been eroding the peace of this place for some time. Walls in my professional life kept falling forward, accelerating into the distance, inviting me to jump on and just ride. It’s so exhilarating to build. Speed and sweeps don’t mix. If you’re flying over the surface you can’t feel what it’s sharing.
No finished piece I’ve ever labored to complete has landed in perfect symmetry. Long after leaves and other signs of life have disappeared, unsealed wood will seek equilibrium, a conduit of humidity, ever expanding and shrinking. This animation affords my hurried soul some license. I will live with the slip and hope my wife sees the gap as character.
“Are these magnets?”
I nod. “Neodymium. Not-so-rare earths. Amazon prime.”
“You know, it’s a little hard to open. Especially with these tiny fancy magnets. Have you thought about a little cleft, you know, a small spot you could just get your finger into that would tell you how to open the box?”
There it was.
Allen munched on fries. I could feel the grinding arc of my rasp on the underside of the lid.
Our Mother’s Days follow a pattern. They begin with breakfast in bed, a weekend newspaper paired with a tabloid, our youngest’s home-baked blueberry scones and, depending on how many of the kids are home, waves of signature treats for our celebrant. Step two is all hers, the day. Finally we all gather for karaoke, dinner, a family table trivia ritual and then dessert frames the gifts.
The burlap and twine wrapped item was the last. I witness our children’s expressions of love and admiration for their mother with one eye, the other framing the experience through my phone. Both of them watery, and unnoticed.
“This is heavy. I wonder what it might be?”
There’s an audible, slightly mocking echo from the kids. The garage doubles as my workspace, and when I am far enough along in a project that the end product is obvious, the family observes a knock-first ‘I’m not looking’ early warning system.
Just as there’s little that can be done to disguise the rising aroma of scones and bacon, the rhythmic sound of sanding is the soundtrack of our lives when I am approaching the finish line.
My wife’s expression softens, her hand glides across the top of the box.
“Oh baby, this is gorgeous!”
Her eyes are locked on mine as her thumb travels the edge, pauses in discovery, and lifts…
