I think about my dad  

my dad can build anything
he's done more than one house, from the ground up:
digging then pouring the foundation,
framing, insulating, roofing, wiring, drywalling, plumbing, painting
then starting at the ground again,
lifting the whole thing to put a basement underneath
I've seen him do the entire thing

my dad can fix anything
car, tractor, bicycle, ski-doo, boat, washer and dryer
he always made us toys out of wood,
and he welded huge iron sculptures for my mom
(which was actually more romantic than she ever let on),
when we were little he built a bunk bed for my brother and I
shaped like a castle, and painted like a rainbow
I've seen him do all these things with his hands and a few simple tools

and I've seen him pull with those tough leather hands,
pull on the ankles of a calf when the cow was too tired to push anymore
pull gently with those strong arms, lower the new little bull onto its shaky legs

and I've seen him drop a bull moose at 75 yards,
then have it skinned and dressed down
and delivered to the freezers of three different families within two days
I've seen those hands plant potatoes and pick them, or carrots, or Swiss chard,
seen them catch a trout, clean it, and have it frying in butter over the fire
before the rest of the family was even out of their tents,
before the sun was even finished rising

but this is what my dad did for a living,
since the farm was never quite enough,
since he had never gone to school past high school,
since he started a family when he was only twenty-one,
this is what he did for a living all those years:

he'd spend two or three months at a time at construction camps
in Kitimat, Prince George, Chetwynd,
half of my childhood, it felt like sometimes,
and of course for my mom it must have felt like that too
I almost believed this was the way all fathers had to work,
to raise money, to support their wives and kids
I didn't know what he was doing at all those camps all the time, but I imagined:
what amazing projects he must have been doing!
after all, he could build anything, fix anything, carve anything you wanted,
and then paint it up the color of dreams like a new Christmas sled under the tree

I was much older of course when I actually realized what it was he had been doing,
all day, every one of those labor camp days away from his family,
every eight or ten or twelve hour stretch of time was spent at the table saw
cutting thousands of identical shapes out of boards
one after another, hour after hour, cut after cut,
a 10 by 10 inch square, maybe, or a 12 by 15 rectangle
whatever it was,
some small piece necessary to build someone's school, or government building,
and every single piece had to be perfect
and my dad had to cut 30 or 40 of them an hour,
every hour, so many hours a day, so many days in the camps, so many months
with strangers who drank and gambled their paychecks away
any semblance of creativity or skill or compassion was sacrificed
to those camps, to those thousands of perfect straight cuts,
to the massive heaps of sawdust that must have piled up around his feet,
to the strokes of the broom, sweeping up at the end of every day
sacrificed to the dark little bunk in the dark little cabin
and sacrificed to the dark sky the next morning at the crack of dawn

so when I hear these conversations
about our jobs not being good enough for us, not being fulfilling enough,
I think about my dad
or when I hear talk about our work not meeting all of our needs,
not making us feel satisfied as human beings,
these conversations at little shaky crappy tables over expensive coffee
about how we need to be doing more than just making money:
we need to be emotionally and spiritually and psychologically fulfilled too
whenever I hear these things spoken
or whenever I hear myself say them
I think about my dad
and when I think about sacrifice
I think about my dad
when I think about the workforce, about manual labor,
about hard work, about working for each and every filthy dollar
I think about my dad
I think about my dad
because what do I know about working anyway
sure I've spent some summers doing this and that
but what do I know

© 2006 Kelly Shepherd