Organizing the Tool Shed

In my office, I keep an old photograph of the Buckaroo Tavern in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont. The photo truly captured the character of the place: two chrome-festooned Harley Davidson motorcycles parked up on the sidewalk out front, bright orbs from the lights hung over the pool tables, and an outstretched arm and pool cue of a patron poised in mid-shot. I spent many nights at this dive bar as a young man. My eyes burned from the cigarette smoke, and the rough-looking biker crowd that congregated at the bar would often chuckle over their beers at this clean-cut accountant toting a pool cue case, but I loved the place. I had the photograph framed when we first moved to Vashon Island. It hangs between a picture of Mark Twain standing before a pool table considering his next shot and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey in his famous boxing stance. But, it’s the tavern picture that has caught my attention lately as I think back on that long ago life before kids.

You see, Lisa and I returned from a 3,000-mile road trip to drop off our son at college last week. And then, a few days later, we waved goodbye to our daughter as she drove off in her loaded-down Nissan to start her public accounting career in Los Angeles. In the space of a single heartbeat, the house went from cacophony and laughter to a hushed stillness.

We’ve been moving toward this day gradually for decades, but the suddenness caught me off guard, like a stiff poke to the solar plexus. For the first few days, I felt listless, perhaps depressed. It helped to keep busy, cleaning out the clutter and detritus left behind in the wake of these departures. My daughter’s old bedroom is now a nicely furnished guest room. I pass by it on the way downstairs each morning, and the shock of seeing her personality stripped from the room has not worn off. I should probably close the door.

Now I’m doing what any reasonable dad would do in this situation: I’m organizing the tool shed. I’ve measured out the available wall space for an elaborate tool storage system to deal with twenty-five years of disarray. I woke up last night dreaming of tools and freshly-shined equipment hanging in perfect order on the south wall of the shed, which I’m pretty sure has a clinical name in psychological circles.

At night, I’m reading Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart to see if some old-fashioned Buddhist wisdom might help. The title felt appropriate for my situation. The advice here is blunt: lean into the loneliness and despair. Accept that life is impermanent and hopeless. “Nothing is what we thought,” she writes.

Even Rosie, the robot vacuum that haunts our rooms and hallways in search of dust and dog hair, seems out of sorts. Amidst the typical family clutter, I swear she steered for the stray charging cables and hair scrunchies that littered her path, opting for a short night’s work as she squealed out error codes in protest. Now, with no obstacles in her way, she carries out the nightly routine in sullen silence. I’ve watched her run into a wall, back up, and run into the same wall, again and again. I know how she feels.

The phone rings daily with questions and puzzlement: what kind of pots and pans should I buy? Why isn’t the internet working? And most recently, a texted picture of a massive drift of white suds covering the kitchen linoleum after using Joy dish soap in the automatic dishwasher. Still, I know these calls are numbered. Their lives will soon blossom out in every direction, with little time left for mom and dad. Cats in the Cradle has become the soundtrack playing in the back of my mind.

I’ve pondered my own abrupt departure from home at seventeen and the impact I must have had on my parents. I don’t recall any remorse at leaving, so desperate to begin a life of independence. It seems Karma has found me on the receiving end of that same natural impulse.

To be fair, we did plan for this eventuality, knowing the two of us would need to fill in the vacuum of our departed children. We bought an ocean-going trawler yacht that will take us on amazing adventures up to Alaska and down to Mexico — something Lisa and I dreamed of doing long before we started a family. And we still have each other: two lovebirds and best friends who laugh and grow quiet at most of the same things.

As I consider my options for pegboard (galvanized steel, ABS plastic, or good old-fashioned fiberboard?) and the kind of hooks and baskets I will need to organize all my tools and gadgets, I understand this present obsession isn’t healthy. I should be provisioning the boat for an extended fall cruise through the Gulf Islands and Desolation Sound, glad we’re not encumbered with school-age children. Or taking my beautiful wife to Tacoma to find a new dive bar where we can resume a 25-years-in-waiting game of nine-ball.

Yet, I can’t shake this feeling that If I could walk through my little shed and admire the nicely spaced rows of hammers and garden implements, the gas trimmer hanging just so, the old jumble of tools and tarps and junk transformed into calming straight lines and order, then … well, then I could begin to accept this new reality, to acclimate to a universe where the axis is just slightly off-kilter, like the deck of a sailboat under a broad reach. Call it a last-minute negotiation in a deal already struck — a vestige of permanence before we set ashore in this undiscovered country while the ships burn, leaving no trace but rusted keels in the shallows.