The Blocks With Which We Build

My father’s huge hands lay across his body, fingers crossed, nails neatly pared and flush with the fingertips, as he had always kept them. Even in death, they seemed ready to build. Staring one last time at those marvelous instruments of precision, I thought about how often they had built things for me. 



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For Dad, building was a journey in which the finished product was anticlimactic to the crafting process. Excellence was never accidental. Whether building a house for his family or a toy for his son, the guidelines were the same: extreme patience, well-thought-out choices, and skillful execution. Quite often, I think about what might have been my favorite of all the toys he built for me: a kite. 

 “March is the best month for kite flying,” he said, on a cold, dreary day in early February. “I’ll build you a box kite.”

 On Sunday afternoons, Dad took a break from tending to his farm, and spent hours in his workshop, doing what he enjoyed most: building, even if it was nothing more than a simple kite. One windy March afternoon, Dad pronounced the aerodynamic work of art ready for its maiden flight. On the upper sail, Mama painted an accurate rendition of one of my favorite fighter aircraft, the P-40 Warhawk, the plane World War II ace Colonel Robert L. Scott flew when he was a member of the famed Flying Tigers. I had read his book, “God Is My Co-Pilot,” so many times that I could almost quote it line by line. On the kite’s lower sail, Mama painted the snarling visage of a tiger. The initial launch was flawless and breathtaking. For several hundred feet, the kite soared straight up into a sunny, cloudless blue sky and hovered, swaying on the steady wind, back and forth, like a ballet dancer. Mesmerized, I watched that quiet, calming choreography until the breeze died, and brought the kite safely back to earth. My hero, Colonel Scott, flew 388 combat missions, and every time he downed an enemy fighter, he painted an appropriate symbol on the nose of his aircraft. I did the same with the box kite. After each flight, I scrawled the date on one of the struts. Soon, all the struts were marked from top to bottom, and the kite was as undamaged and airworthy as ever — a testament to its builder’s skills. I now realize that my father approached everything — raising a family and crops, duty to God and country, and life itself — as a building project, and the same rigid guidelines applied to all. 

 American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow must have had craftsmen like Dad in mind when he wrote these lines in his poem, “The Builders”:

Nothing useless is, or low: 
Each thing in its place is best;
 And what seems but idle show
 Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled;
 Our todays and yesterdays
 Are the blocks with which we build.