My father’s shed has remained much the way he left it 7 years ago. Sure we’ve rearranged things, discarded some items, added others and overall tidied up in the meantime but the basic layout is as Papa designed it; everything in it’s place and a place for everything. Now where those places are and what you’ll find there is another story entirely.
With that in mind I went to fix Mom’s Christmas light timer and began the seemingly impossible task of finding a key missing piece amidst a sea of missing pieces. As I entered my father’s shed I somehow knew I would find what I was looking for, that despite the preponderance of insurmountable odds my efforts would not be in vein. Somehow I knew I’d either find the part I was looking for or the inspiration to jerry-rig a workable solution.
Once inside I spotted there beneath the bench a rusty blue container that I knew from endless hours of apprenticeship at camp Vito, to contain a dizzying array of nuts and bolts. A formidable chaos of discarded odds and ends. There are literally thousands of miscellaneous pieces in this box nestled among decades of dust . My reluctance to pursue this avenue of exploration was understandable despite the nagging insistence to the contrary that lingered just at the fringe of my instincts. Half-heartedly I dove into the box and within the fleet of a moment pulled the proverbial needle from the haystack. Call it divine providence or call it dumb luck but this is not the first time I’ve been similarly guided in that shed.
The truth is, I feel my father’s presence the most in there. I find myself talking to him as if he were with me. Asking and answering questions to the otherwise silent sanctum of his leaky aging shed. I don’t really believe in ghosts but there is an undeniable essence within those walls that begs a deeper existential pondering. What if when we die all our energy, our life force, is dispersed back into the world. Perhaps that energy accumulates in places that inspire the deepest of memories from those that we left behind. Maybe heaven is simply the perception of that energy and an eternal connection to our loved ones and all that shall follow in our name.
Mannino Acid 