“You gonna cut yo’ feet on some rock lime and be laid up away from that thing!” She’d preach from the kitchen window. I didn’t pay her any mind. It was her way of saying goodbye for those hours I’d leave her to be with my second love, my Carolina oak workbench.

But she’d watch, all day, drinking her pomegranate juice and watching her programs from the window, always with the vigilant, pursed lip expression she got from her mother. It was a fierce mask that woman gave my wife, hiding a half century of love but took a decade to see behind. The required price, I suppose.

This afternoon it was a bleached maple, hutch top waiting for me. Reluctantly, I set down my raspberry tea and found myself gliding my fingers over the hand plank resting where it’d been left a week prior. The sigh followed. They came a lot of late but never stayed long. Maybe its why I come out here. The smell of the teak and the oil mixed with the memories always kept their notes a bit lighter. And running my hands over the dusty grain brought me comfort.

“Why do the top first?”

I’d managed to coax her out into the firestorm of hellfire sunshine she was so terrified of and it was the first thing she asked me when she got closer to it. Then I took her hand and ran it across the mahogany end table top.

That one…how many?

It’s hard to recall now. Four hundred. Yes, four hundred times under the 200 mil. Seeing her face,  caressing that smooth as a baby’s bottom, center cut of wood, she smiled like it was the fourth of July. Every time since; that is on the rare occasion she’d step foot out, it was the first thing she’d do, run her hands across whatever it was I was sanding. I’d let that part take me some time on every piece.

I was right to come out late to finish today. The morning heat kept it soft all afternoon and the last slivers of teak just melted away. Round and soft the curves were now. A few more hours and she’d be done. Then I thought I heard that singer’s voice that always starts her programs and looked to the window, but it was just the wind. Reaching down and seeing the wrinkles in my hands and the knobs of my knuckles…I felt blessed.