Abandon Mythology

I haven’t been blogging lately because I’ve been spending most of my spare time on primarily two tasks; making another guitar and arguing with teenagers parenting. I’m enjoying some success with the former. The latter? Time will tell, but right now … not so much.

This is my second guitar, and the first that will have been built completely from scratch. I purchased a bending iron and I’ve been teaching myself how to bend wood. Here’s a poor photo of some early results:

Whether I’m easing these thin strips of maple and rosewood into circles for inlaying around the sound hole or muscling the wide, flat, side pieces into that classic big-bottomed-woman guitar shape, there’s a certain knack required for the process. A knack from which I can’t help drawing parallels to my aforementioned child-rearing challenges.

I’m dealing with three high-schoolers right now, all possessed of that typical American teenager’s arrogance coupled with an assumption of knowledge that borders on delusional. As they fumble their way cluelessly toward adulthood, my efforts to provide guidance are endlessly frustrating and seemingly futile, but I persevere. A man propelling a sailboat with his own breath.

Fatherhood, like bending wood, is about applying just the right amount of heat and pressure. Each child, and each piece of wood, is unique, requiring a different mixture of delicacy and firmness and patience. I am forced to proceed largely by feel, often reflecting on my own father’s lamentation that ”Kids don’t come with instructions.”

When working with the iron, there is a certain point when the wetted wood is very hot — just before it dries out and begins to burn — where it becomes somewhat elastic for a few moments. My fingertips dance about, avoiding the heat, as the wood almost seems to relax and submit to my will. (That never happens with my kids.)

With wood bending, my effectiveness is immediately apparent; the wood either bends or it breaks. It’s a much slower process with my kids. All I can do is keep applying pressure and heat and hope for the best. At least the wood never says anything to me that threatens to make the top of my head blow off.

Fall is upon us here in Misery. In a cycle as old as life itself, cool nights, warm days and that certain something in the air signal the coming winter to every living thing. As the foliage begins to fade, the activities of all creatures seem to take on more purpose, an air of preparation. The squirrels are cutting hickory nuts, the birds are flocking for migration, and I’ve laid in a supply of dark beer. Readiness is key.

Darkness comes not only in the form of beer, though. The days grow shorter, the nights longer, the increasing gloom augmenting middle-age melancholy as my thoughts drift inexorably toward mortality.

My maternal grandmother came to visit me recently. She is my last living grandparent, and won’t be around much longer. In truth, a lot of her is gone already. Her body and her mind both grow smaller and frailer with each passing day. The numbers tell the story; 86 years old, weighing 61 pounds. What sad irony that the woman who was once a large part of my world is now too small to activate the automatic air bag sensor in the passenger seat of a car. It is but one of many ways she no longer counts as an adult.

It is not often I consider the short life-span of my father’s side of my family a blessing, but I began to do just that while gazing upon my grandmother sitting in my living room, her body nothing more than translucent skin stretched over a bent and brittle skeleton, her mind aware of, but unable to follow or participate in the conversations going on around her. There are worse fates than dying young.