When I was a teenager my dad started building a small cabin by the lake on the edge of our property.
At first he said it was a fishing shack, then he said it would be a guest house. He worked on it for years, always making it bigger, always improving it. I could recognize the fact that our family didn’t really need a cabin at all, but it seemed important to Dad. I think he preferred working with his hands to being around his family. In order to spend more time with him I started helping Dad with the cabin, most notably with installing the brick fireplace, and later, the water boiler. We spent an entire summer building that brick fireplace, and it is a summer I will never forget. Dad was a big fan of going slow, brick by brick, making every detail perfect, and I came to see that it wasn’t about the fireplace at all. With so many aspects of his life being out of his control, Dad found peace and harmony in doing things like building a fireplace. He took his time to make it perfect, because he knew nothing else in life would ever be perfect! Maybe I’m getting a little maudlin, but to this very day I always think of Dad when I see a fireplace. It was a much easier task when he installed the hot water heater. Dad was still working on the fishing shack when he passed away, but I can’t imagine he would have wanted to go any other way.