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<\/p>\nIt was the kind of answer you pray for when you are on the verge.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t worry, Mom, I\u2019ll take care of it,\u201d my competent daughter said in response to my panicky text.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll leave in about 15 minutes and will be right over.\u201d \u00a0I couldn\u2019t find an emoji for desperation, but no matter–she clearly heard it in my silent message.<\/p>\n
The problem at hand was the assembly of a multi-tiered cat \u201ctower.\u201d\u00a0 With shocking naivete, I had just slit open the box top, dumped out all the parts, and stared aghast at the pile.\u00a0 I pounded on the empty box again, to make sure a lovely, beefy instruction booklet wasn\u2019t stuck down in the bottom. Sure enough, there was only this diagram:<\/p>\n
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This is it? Letters and numbers only, no orderly Step 1 and 2, no identification on the parts that rolled away when I spilled them out, as if to escape incompetence when they sniffed it.\u00a0 The pudgy dog, loitering nearby and watching closely for my next move, poked his nose in curiosity at a couple of miscellaneous tubular items as they traveled past.\u00a0 My next move was motivated largely by his girth; the whole purpose of the cat tower was to elevate the cat bowl and get it out of the dog\u2019s reach. \u201cCat food will put weight on him in no time,\u201d the vet had said rather sternly at our last visit, noting my little pal\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n
I texted the diagram to my daughter, breathing heavily.\u00a0 What am I supposed to do with just this, I snapped? (No snapping emoji, either, but the steadfast child got the gist.)<\/p>\n
Sure enough, this problem-solving female batted not an eye when she sallied through the front door a half-hour later, toting a couple of screwdrivers and the expression of a mountain climber who can see the peak of Everest in view.\u00a0 She scanned the diagram briefly, then commenced with no hesitation.\u00a0 \u201cI love doing this stuff,\u201d she admitted, nary a pause in the flow as she attached this part to that, this bolt with that screw, and a structure began to rise from the floor.\u00a0 How on earth did you learn to do this?\u00a0 I asked, watching from a non-hovering distance.\u00a0 \u201cJust done a lot of these, I guess,\u201d she said. \u00a0\u201cI think it\u2019s fun.\u201d\u00a0 Skeptical of that last but awash in admiration, I thought back to college apartments, her first home, her addresses since, and wondered how I hadn\u2019t taken notice of this talent.\u00a0 And like a mother so often does, I silently pondered hereditary factors; her father, my ex-husband, is a very handy soul who learned from his highly skillful father.\u00a0 Must have come from that side of her genes, I concluded—she sure didn\u2019t get it from me.<\/p>\n
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And why didn\u2019t she?\u00a0 I berated myself later, while admiring the cat chomping her dinner quietly on her lofty perch, competition for the meal having been eliminated by its newly elevated location.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t I ever learn to be handy?\u00a0 Nearly 80 years after Rosie the Riveter and her real-life counterparts labored in Navy machine shops and triumphed as riveters on fight planes, how did I remain dependent on others, often males (before I had a talented adult daughter), for such tasks?\u00a0 Women have broken through in every line of work imaginable; is this the last bastion of masculine domination among the tasks of daily living? How did women my age miss this opportunity?<\/p>\n
The answer, which likely surprises no one but me, is many haven\u2019t and didn\u2019t.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing like an informal Facebook poll to propel you quickly forward into the current moment.\u00a0 I asked my female FB friends to share their experiences with handy work.\u00a0 Then, I sat back and got myself wowed as the comments flowed in with tales of necessity, self-sufficiency, even relaxation. Here\u2019s one:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad had all girls and my Mom was really handy – the two of them just passed on an expectation that we could learn to do all sorts of mechanical tasks. Doing things that involve figuring out how to accomplish a more physical task after working most of my life in roles that required intense concentration has been a relief\u2026My favorite outdoor tool is a chain saw; indoor? Magnetized screwdrivers.\u201d<\/p>\n
And this:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026yeah, I\u2019m handy. Real handy. Tile, wood floors, light fixtures, toilet replacement, LMK when to stop… My dad had me changing tires with him when I was about eight\u2026My ex and I were flat broke trying to raise a family when we were young, so it was either do it ourselves or not get it done. Once I was single that carried on and maybe even increased. My daughter got me a power tools set for Mother\u2019s Day last year. I find it relaxing to accomplish something with my hands since my job only uses my brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
A different set of needs, but same outcome.\u00a0 Wow:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I figured out how to farm. Chainsaws, tractors and implements, fence-building, metal roofing, shed construction, barn repairs, etc. a bit of this and that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And finally, the Queen of Handy (unnamed here, but you know who you are) rules all with this testimony:<\/p>\n
\u201cI do all kinds of projects\u2026The internet has been a game changer in learning how to do things\u2026I especially like to tile – I’ve done about eight bathrooms, several kitchens, two fireplaces and numerous floors.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s all math and patterns, things my brain likes. I learned by necessity – limited budget\u2026so I figured out what I could do, what I could learn to do and what I’d need help with\u2026I plan it out in my head, then do it on paper, and then execute. I just spent the last year scraping popcorn off ceiling, texturing, then cutting holes in the ceilings of four bedrooms and the hall, and crawling up in the attic to install the ceiling braces and run the wiring\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight bathrooms?\u00a0 Ceiling braces and wiring?\u00a0 My admiration knows no bounds.\u00a0 Clearly, women have broken through on yet another frontier, and somehow, I missed it.\u00a0 Could there still be time to catch up?\u00a0 I\u2019m shamed, or intrigued, or both, into inspiration. \u00a0I have no idea what magic may be performed with magnetized screwdrivers, but perhaps the right tools make all the difference.\u00a0 Santa?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was the kind of answer you pray for when you are on the verge. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, Mom, I\u2019ll take care of it,\u201d my competent daughter said in response to my panicky text.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll leave in about 15 minutes and will be right over.\u201d \u00a0I couldn\u2019t find an emoji for desperation, but no matter–she clearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[166,165,164,167],"class_list":["post-2314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-mid-life-adventures","tag-daughters","tag-handywomen","tag-handywork","tag-rosie-the-riveter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}