I thought I’d built my last cabinet/bookshelf/workbench until this weekend when I realized I needed yet another.

There’s hardly any room left in this old house, not even a nook or corner where I haven’t fit in some urgently needed item of furniture. Several hold books, a window seat has my winter/summer clothes, the fish tank sits atop another, the sewing machine (one of them) on a table, the other in the shop on the counter with a wonky drawer. I’ve never done well with drawers

I sit at a desk jury-rigged from a small table and a glued up top big enough to hold the computer, scanner, and printer. A tall, narrow bookshelf fits perfectly into the little space between the stove mantel and the door jam. On the long wall of the room that was once Wally’s den is the piece de resistance of my carpentry skills – the Murphy bed, cunningly (I thought) hidden inside a cabinet, which makes a perfect stage for my collection of handmade dolls. The whole arrangement is the backdrop in any zoom calls I make. A little creepy if you don’t like dolls.

My first clumsy attempt at furniture construction was the gun case I made for Wally one Christmas: “1981” is carved at the top, and it stood in this room. After Wally died it had to go to make room for the Murphy bed, though not without a few tears at the memories. I finally found an empty corner to slide it into, re-purposed as a doll cabinet.

I owned a single saw in 1981, a circular saw that was not made for ripping boards lengthwise. The gun case was clearly beyond my skills. I couldn’t figure out how to neatly divide a wide pine board into two equal pieces with that circular saw. So, I took it over to Walt Simmons’ shop and asked if he’d rip it for me. He did.

What would, what did Wally think as I relentlessly refitted the inside of these rooms with my amateurish cabinetry? Bemused perhaps, glad definitely that I wasn’t hounding him to build me a glass-doored cupboard for the miniature candlestick collection I’d brought to our marriage.

We each brought our own skills to that connubial arrangement, and his had nothing to do with building stuff with power tools. Or any tools. He still carried the emotional scars of a stepfather who called him stupid (or worse maybe) whenever he made a mistake. Meanwhile, I was – still am – lacking his remarkable intuition, his ability to understand what another person was about.

For a man so hobbled, so wounded by the words of the guy who’d – probably unwillingly – taken on the role of father, Wally gamely figured out so much of our life here. How to build a fence and keep the electricity flowing, to milk a cow, keep small engines running, butcher a pig, gut a chicken, catch the wily little trout in Frohock Brook.  And even, ever so occasionally, bring home a deer in November.

The skills he taught our sons were more enduring than those, though. I see him in them every day. One a math teacher, one a family therapist, one a passionate activist. Each carries their father’s DNA.

He sat at the old barn loom, weaving through the days of his retirement – 17 years to be exact – making rag rugs. For most of those years we had 20, 30, 40 rugs hanging up at a time. Weaving is all about patience, to turn a basketful of fabric strips (cut from old clothes; he did that endlessly) into a completely different fabric, a rug.

And he had that patience. It’s all about staying on that seat until the rug is done. I’ve never had it, the ability to stay put for hours at a single task.  I used to tell anyone who’d listen that he didn’t have to get up to stir the soup or pull the baby out of the well. And I still believe there’s some biological impulse for women to do several things at once (rearing babies and making soup, for instance) that men don’t have.

He loved two things about weaving. Getting up in the morning with a goal in mind: starting and finishing another rug. And talking to the people that came into the shop, hearing the stories they’d tell him about their lives – and they did, complete strangers. There was something about him that made you want to tell.

And here I am, talking about him again. I suspect it’s a topic constantly on the minds of the many widows/widowers around our town. I just counted twelve, going around the block, which in my case is the circle of Beach-Atlantic Highway-Ducktrap Road. They’ve always been here, the ones left behind when a spouse dies, but until it happened to me, I hadn’t thought much about what that’s like. Now, just driving by the house of a w/w I sense the emptiness inside.

But wait. I set out this morning to write, not about Wally, but about the latest improvement I’m contemplating. Wrenching in its way, but because it involves building yet another cabinet I’ll survive.

The layout of this kitchen has evolved over 52 years, but most of the changes have taken us back in time, not forward. We replaced the porcelain sink with a huge, slate one we found via Uncle Henry’s – $10 and we picked it up. When the former owner took her woodstove with her, we got another, a Glenwood, and about the same time, got rid of the gas range we’d brought with us.

Then we found a Glenwood sidecar, a nifty little thing that hung off the side of the cookstove, with three burners, a tiny oven and even a broiler; a gas stove, handy in warm weather. No pilot light, certainly no electric ignition, you turn on the gas and light it with a match.

Let’s just say, it's not an approved gas appliance.

I’ve been thinking of getting a modern stove top to replace it for several years, but am held back by sentiment. I love the wonky old thing, sitting on a brick platform ever since the little cast iron “ears” that attached it to the mother stove broke off. I haven’t used its oven or broiler in years, after we scored a fine (and free) convection wall oven when a Camden friend did a major kitchen renovation.

Suffice it to say, a new owner of this house would tear out the kitchen first thing. Anyway, I found a stove top online and within days it was on my doorstep.

The sidecar will go down to the Schoolhouse Museum to sit alongside the Glenwood cookstove Wally and I found some years ago, and gave “on loan” to the historical society. Our own Glenwood has seen half a century of hard use, leaving its top warped and its chrome irredeemably worn.

I think of the one at the museum as our parts stove. Actually, when the time comes and if I can find anyone willing to haul one cookstove downstairs and another up, I’ll trade them.

I spent the week-end drawing endless layouts of the cabinet I’ll be building to sit next to the Glenwood. Painted black and with a nice little door on the front and space inside for random pots and pans, it will be the perfect size. And the shiny, new, five burner gas number will sit neatly on the top.

Town

Don’t forget, property taxes are due next week!

School

The Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) is holding a “casual meet and greet for members of the LCS community” at the Lobster Pound this Thursday, Sept. 29, 5:30-7 p.m. There’ll be light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. Intended for adult members of the community it sounds like a great way to bring people together.

Ever since the pandemic shut us all away from each other for months (years?) on end, there’s been a serious need for us to find ways to reconnect again. This sounds like a great start.