MY FATHER'S HANDS

My legs hurt. The 14th bead of sweat that hour trickled its maddening way down my backbone. And that stupid plumb line would not stop moving.

It was my fifth week on the job. I was squatting in the belly of the newest hull with the line boss, laying out the structural grid and wishing that break would come soon. The plumb line finally stopped and I marked the next point on the grid while Tri grumbled at my clumsiness. The next time he reached down and stopped it for me--I was just too slow--but as he did his hands touched mine and I was transported across the country and back in time.

When I was a boy I lived for the days I could go to work with Dad. He would wake me early, his hand on my shoulder, and I dressed in the dark, trying to finish in only a minute so I could call myself a Minuteman. The cool air never felt so good as it did those mornings--we snuck out to Dad's messy old yellow pickup and he put the clutch in without starting it so we could coast out of the driveway without waking Mom.

We passed the dry lake bed just as the first light of dawn began to show the gray forest. I always craned my neck over the dashboard to see the log that looked like a horse and the tree that my parents had paddled a canoe around when the lake filled before I was born. And I was always watching in hopes that I might see some elk that morning.

And then we were there--the warmth of my grandmother's kitchen, the smell of coffee, eating raw oats and milk with Grandpa and Dad, listening to them talk shop and reveling in it all. I was going to work with Dad.

We finished eating and went out to the shop and Dad started work. And he let me help--he showed me how to mix the resin and how to sand or fill the flaws, but before any of that we had to get our gloves.

And oh, how I hated those gloves--they were latex and felt weird, and left gloppy white residue on my hands because my sweat made mud with the powder inside, and they were all too big for me anyway and kept falling off or getting in the way as I tried to work.

But then we started and Dad told me what to do and then, because I was young and didn't know how, he took my hands in his and guided them and showed me what to do. And the gloves weren't small on him, or gloppy, or sweaty--his hands were big and strong and warm and knew exactly what to do. They were man's hands, supporting the family, earning 88 dollars a day, keeping the wolf from the door, and they were showing me how to be a man.

And then I was back in the boat with Tri, and break still hadn't come, and as we moved towards the stern I wept for my childhood, when my father didn't make mistakes and his gloved hands upheld my world and everything was right and safe, and I felt like a man because I got to go to work with Dad.

And I realized how much I loved the feel of latex gloves on my father's hands.