Best day ever. Home improvement with my son Jack

The best day ever for a seven year often involves a device: Tablet, TV, cushy sitting device called a sofa. 

But we’re a home improvement family. It’s what we do. How we eat. What makes us tick. And I’d like to give Jack some of that, which was my goal one crappy winter day.

The ‘job’ I had for Jack was to move and stack about 50 pieces of pallet wood I had piled up after cutting the pallets apart.

Jack did not want that job. Or any job, really.

He started his anti-home improvement by resistance-bargaining: ‘How many pieces’?

‘All of them,’ I said.

‘How many is that?’

‘All of them means all of them’.

‘How many minutes’, slight subject change, but really the same question.

This sequence repeated, I’m estimating using the parent patience clock, 150 times.

I tried to tell him the less he talked, the sooner he’d be done.

 

Then something funny happened. And my son laughed. I laughed. He kept stacking.

For no reason I said, ‘Good job building our tower’.

He smiled and said, ‘We’re building our tower’.

His hands were cold. They turned red. He shoved them in his sleeves between boards, but kept walking and stacking and walking. Doing simple work well. Now, without crying.

Before he completed our job stacking the pallet wood, I gave him more things to move to another place, which he did joyfully. Non screen-fully. Outside-fully. No sofa in sight. I actually started to let myself enjoy it. But only a little.

He walked and carried and I’m pretty sure he glowed a little. I crouched to work on something when he appeared in my view.

Out of nowhere my son asks, ‘Dad, will this be one of the best days of my life’?

‘Maybe son’, I said to him.

It is certainly one of the best days of mine.

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Do you have a best day ever home improvement-ing with your family? Let us know.