Junkyards, pressure washers, and self-sufficiency

The most valuable lessons in life are sometimes the ones we have to learn ourselves.

We sat with our tea and gingersnaps, visiting as we so often do. My dad is 87, and he tells the best stories, about growing up desperately poor in the Chilcotin, British Columbia. He told me about the time he was paid $15 to haul a dead frozen body into town, and how difficult it was, on horseback. He was 15 years old at the time.

And then, he asked me, do you know when I realized that you were going to turn out OK?

Well of course I was curious to learn this.

He then told me a story about how my car had a broken side mirror. I barely remember this, but it's an important memory to my dad.

I had apparently come a little too close to something, and had broken the mirror off the side of my car. I asked my dad to fix it for me, and he said that he would help me, but only if I would find the part. On my budget, the only way I was going to get a mirror was to buy one at the wrecking yard.

“I can't do that. I can't go to a wrecking yard. I don't know how to do that”, I told him.

“Well then, I guess you won't have a mirror”, he responded.

I don't remember going to the wrecking yard. But my dad remembers me returning, triumphantly, with a beat up but functional mirror. Together we installed it and my car was once again safe to drive.

My dad went on to say that he had never been more proud of me than the day I went to the wrecking yard. I didn't think I could do it. It was uncomfortable for me, and maybe it shouldn't have been, but I was sure I couldn't do it. I did it anyway. A small thing, but perhaps more formative in my life than I realized at the time.

Life has handed me so many challenges since that day, which was probably nearly 40 years ago now. I've tried lots of things, and I've failed at some and succeeded at many. But almost all of them were uncharted and untried waters at the time.

I got my nursing degree basically by homeschooling myself, before the days of the internet. After attending LPN school at a local vocational college, I discovered that LPN stood for Low Paid Nurse. As a single mom, I needed an income that would support me and my son, since we were surviving on a budget that should have left us homeless. We never lacked for anything, but it was strategy and grace that got us through each month. I didn't have the time or energy to work, attend school, and raise a child simultaneously. A nurse I worked with told me about a program that allowed a working nurse to get a degree by taking advanced placement tests. Over the course of two years, I studied and read and took tests, obtaining a degree and ultimately landing a job as a NICU nurse, which I held for 28 years. It was challenging, to say the least. Only recently did I realize and appreciate that my parents let me struggle through those years. They didn’t abandon me, but neither did they figure it out for me. They believed in my ability to make choices, and live with the consequences.

Other things seem less daunting, and yet have given me that same sense of accomplishment. There was the day I replaced the seal on a refrigerator door, or the day I took my pressure washer apart and cleaned out the fuel line. Watching that pressure washer roar to life was just so very satisfying. I did it, thanks to persistence and the help of YouTube.

This week, I decided to paint my little rental house myself. Even a small house is a large job to paint, and this one is in pretty bad shape. The exterior fairly screams the phrase “deferred maintenance”. As I began scraping and inspecting, I noticed that almost all of the glazing around the old wooden windows was falling out. Undaunted, I went to my favorite source for do-it-yourself guidance. After watching several YouTube videos and chatting with a friend who is a housepainter, I bought a glazing knife, a tub of glazing compound, and set to work. It won't be perfect, but the windows are sealed up again, and the house will stand.

On my way home, my dad called. What are you doing, he asked me.

He didn't seem a bit surprised when I told him I was glazing windows. Oh yeah, you'll be fine, he said.

And I thought about how thankful I am for him, and for the day that he told me to go to the junkyard myself.

A favorite quote of mine is by Elizabeth Elliot: “Sometimes fear does not subside, and you must do it afraid”. I think this is significant both for parents who find themselves in deep waters, and for our children. We are both navigating waters that are deeper and more treacherous than we ever imagined. The only thing for it, is to wade on in. Life contains struggles and challenges for all of us. And sometimes the hardest thing we have to do is to let our kids meet their own challenges, standing at the shore to meet them as they do.