When I was a teenager our Mom started building a small lodge 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, then he tested it for years, constantly making it bigger, constantly improving it, then i could guess the fact that our family didn’t genuinely need a lodge at all, but it seemed important to Mom. I think he number one working with his hands to being around his family. In order to spend more time with him I started helping Mom with the lodge, most notably with installing the cement fireplace, and later, the water boiler… Both of us spent an entire summer time building that cement fireplace, and it is a summer time I will never forget, Mom was a sizable fan of going slow, cement by brick, making every detail perfect, and I came to see that it wasn’t about the fireplace at all, however with so multiple aspects of his life being out of his control, Mom found peace and harmony in doing things love 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 entirely afternoon I constantly think of Mom when I see a fireplace. It was a much easier task when he installed the tepid water heater. Mom was still working on the fishing shack when he passed away, although I can’t imagine he would have wanted to go any other way.