Father's Day Feats

My husband prefaced his Father’s Day remarks at church Sunday with a quote from General Douglas MacArthur. “By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. Soldiers destroy so they can build. Fathers don’t destroy, they just keep building.”

Keep building. There’s been a lot of that around here lately. After we had done rudimentary work in backyard improvement with a small stone patio, an arrangement of statuary, flowers and a new swing, our kids were inspired to take it to a whole new level! So for Father’s Day, Greg and Joanna came over Saturday with a truck loaded with bags of garden soil, mulch, weed-resistant liner, paint, lumber, rocks, shovels, plus a pond liner and pump.

With the whirring of a finely tuned machine, they and their kids, Adam and Allison, set to work, while I stood in amazement as they carted our wobbly yard furniture to the alley, manned weed-eaters and shovels, put in shade-tolerant plants, then cutting and sawing, building and attaching new garage doors. While waiting for the garage to be painted by a helper, they passed the time by digging a pond, arranging rocks, setting up a fountain and pump and generally beautifying the place.

I brought out my potato salad, Howard grilled burgers, and we sat in the shade at our picnic table surveying the progress. What a transformation! I mean, it had looked nice before, but now it looked bigger, cleaner, and better! Especially with the remnants of a sawed-up, downed tree removed from where it had lain for a couple of months.

Early Monday morning we were outside enjoying the new environs, admiring some small fish Howard had bought Sunday afternoon. The wind was blowing furiously, and I kept hearing a creaking sound that we’d first heard Saturday from a tree with an old crack in it. I looked up, and the tree had raw wood showing through, and the crack had extended considerably. As the day wore on, and the wind grew stronger, I was increasingly worried. We called an expert who said there was no way to get equipment in to remove the tree, but to call the power company when and if fell on the lines.

When Greg heard about it, he came to check on it, and the first thing I knew, he was on top of the neighboring garage sawing off tree limbs. He was going to take it down! I held my breath and did a lot of praying. Greg was a human monkey, climbing the injured tree, perching on limbs, sawing over his head with a chain saw! I went inside when he finally got down. Good. They would leave it, I thought. Obviously, it wasn’t going to fall, having held his weight.

A little later, Howard called me to come out. The tree was down! They and a neighbor had roped and guided it safely to the ground as it fell from their strategically placed precision cut at its base. All the destroying and building that had taken place that day and the day before was remarkable, but it was nothing compared to a lifetime of building a son, who may not be a soldier, but who is a real trooper!