One sad weekend, my Dad visited with his girlfriend and tools to help me with fall home repairs. But that wasn’t what my broken heart needed most from him.

On a crisp, mid-November Sunday, my Dad called up to me from the basement of my house.

“Where are the drill bits?” he hollered.

I’d asked him to secure a loose gutter to my tall, folk Victorian with its dark grey wood clapboards and crisp white trim.

The purpose of his visit supposedly was to help me get the house ready for winter.

But really, he was checking on me, just weeks after my first marriage fell apart and we had separated.

My Dad and Stephanie, his longtime girlfriend, had driven out from Ohio to central Pennsylvania on Saturday. We’d visited, talked a lot about needed home repairs — but had not yet finished any. We’d gone to dinner at a friend’s Saturday night and to Sunday brunch at the café in town.

They would soon leave. With a little bit of luck, we could at least get that gutter repair done before then. 

Two sets of drill bits should have been in plain view, among the assorted tools in the basement. Drill bits are the detachable, business parts of a power drill tailored to the size of the needed hole. Those cases of bits, arranged by size, were around plenty as I searched for other tools, so they should be right there.

Rising Frustration, Rising Suspicion

But after 10 minutes of searching, we could not find even a single, random drill bit.

Frustration tightened my gut and my jaw. Deep breath. Stay calm, I told myself, then failed to quiet a rising suspicion that my estranged husband had taken every set of drill bits when he moved out that fall.

Three months later, my divorce lawyer would say, as we wrapped up our first meeting: “This is just so sad. You’re 40. You don’t have kids. You’re alone. You had money. Now you don’t.”

I asked her: “Is that supposed to be a pep talk?”

Crappy pep talks aside, she turned out to be fantastic at walking me through an inexpensive, DIY divorce.

But none of that had happened yet on that day the drill bits went missing. The break was fresh.

Mr. Fix-It

My Dad knew how to fix just about anything: Engines, cars, trucks, electrical wiring, lawnmowers, plumbing.

As a little girl, I loved to drive to the hardware store with him. Or, as I got older and stronger, to help him bust up concrete with a sledge hammer — to be with him no matter what we were doing. After I bought my first house, a three-family, old house in Maine, he taught me to use a blow torch to sweat pipes and install a new water heater for a tenant.

Smart, charming and funny, he was also great with women. But marriage was another story. Our two families, the one with my mom and the one with my stepmom, had broken in divorces.

I’d grown up feeling starved not just for time with him, but for us to truly know and accept each other. A master of small talk and shooting the breeze, he had trouble with serious, substantive conversations. At least with me.

He’d change the subject or make a joke, tease me into a tailspin that left me in tears. He’d leave or otherwise shut me down — when all I really needed was for him to listen.

We had both worked hard to change our thorny, cold relationship, to close our distance one visit and conversation at a time. One old-house project at a time, first in Maine, then on this adorable Victorian in a quaint Pennsylvania town. For the whole story of making peace with my dad, read The Story of Our First Thanksgiving in February.

By that fall day when we were searching for the drill bits, real, honest heart-to-heart conversations were possible and more frequent.

Just not guaranteed.

The Calvary Arrives in a Saab

That weekend, I bet my dad was also shocked. He wanted to be the calvary riding in with his tools and practical knowledge to fix and patch his fallen, eldest daughter and her house back into some sort of wholeness. My mom, quite possibly, had dispatched him and awaited a report.

When my fiancé and I were house-hunting and fell in love with the grey house described in the listing as “cutie patootie,” my dad drove out to look it over.

“Buy it,” he said. And I did.

Five years later, the marriage had failed. We separated early that November. I knew it was over.

Emotionally, I was still in shock. Raw grief lurked around the edges as I forced myself to focus on practical things: Plug the drafts. Fix the gutters. Batten down the hatches. Winter is coming. 

Listing ALL the Problems? Sorry, Not Helpful

When my dad and Stephanie first arrived, he settled with his coffee in the living room, looking around at all the work to be done. He saw the same blights that I saw every day: Stained carpet, an old, king-size beast of a sleeper sofa upholstered in chestnut brown and red diamonds that my estranged husband’s family had cherished.

And yet, there it sat. In my living room.

A half-done paint job that left the walls a ragged mess of beige, white primer and a butter yellow.

Dad listed all the obvious problems, and the list went on and on. Not helpful.

“Dad, focus please. I need your help with the gutters,” I said. The painting could wait. Plug the drafts. Fix the gutters. Winter is coming.

But he was not hearing me.

Then he found and remarked on more things that needed attention: A crack in one plaster wall. A tea-colored splotch on the ceiling, indicating a leak. The uneven molding between the rooms. So many little things had cracked in the more than 100 years since this wood, limestone rock and plaster had been assembled into a shelter and built into a steep hill.

 Now, feeling quite shaky, I turned to Stephanie.

“Steph, you have to make him stop doing that,” I pled. “I’m going to lose it. Please. I’m already so overwhelmed.”

She understood.

“David!” she said, and he snapped his head in her direction. “Stop it. That’s not helpful.”

He looked confused. But he stopped talking about everything that needed attention.

Then, he turned to me and said: “How did all of this happen?”

I can’t even recall whether I attempted an explanation of the condition of the house or the failure of the marriage. Perspective comes later, after survival.

But I knew winter was coming. Secure the gutter. Plug the drafts.

White Rage Unleashed

And that one task required drill bits.

He must have taken them, I thought that Sunday, getting shakier with frustration turning to anger at my estranged husband.

And if so — it would be a tiny, petty act he knew would hurt me. My love for old houses that needed constant attention had been a source of conflict for us. Working hard on some project, gritty and covered in sweat, was not his favorite way to spend a weekend. He preferred traveling and many other forms of relaxation.

And so for him to take the damn drill bits …

The more I thought about that, the more enraged I became. My short fuse lit up like the flaming, Olympic cauldron. Blood boiling, my vision blurred as I slammed the cabinet door and stomped up to the kitchen in a rage that turned my vision white, shouting and cussing.

Upstairs, Stephanie was mending. As I blew by her, to check the attic for the drill bits, I muttered the problem.

“You need tools with PINK handles!” she called out. “Then no man will take them.”

This only poured gasoline on my fiery rage. I’d used tools with pink handles. They tended to be crap. An offensive marketing gimmick, actually.  I’d thrown them away.

“I don’t want tools with f-ing PINK handles!” I shouted as I climbed to the attic, where there were no drill bits. “I want MY tools, my GOOD tools. He isn’t even handy! He doesn’t CARE about any of this stuff. He doesn’t need drill bits!”

Nothing shocks my dad into quiet like an enraged woman.

When I returned to the basement, I found him standing at the washing machine, patiently waiting for my storm to pass.

A Clutch Moment

It swept out, leaving me spent, weary and full of sorrow.

I started to cry.

My Dad quietly, gently opened his arms.

I stepped into his embrace, and collapsed against his chest, sobbing and heaving. A big, snotty, sobbing mess against his red cotton sweater.

He did not say a word. Just wrapped his arms around me — and it was precisely what I needed from him in that moment, and had needed from him over all those years of distance.

I was still 40 — and also somewhere in that mess a five-year-old kid, missing her Dad.

Oh, You Mean Gone

When I was in my 20s and living on the Maine coast, I volunteered with an organization that helped families through the grieving process. During our training, I’d learned how a child often grieves, and some ways to help.

A child will seem just fine, we were told, going about his day despite a loss we know to be devastating to him, because he doesn’t fully understand what “gone” means.

But he’s working on it in the background. As time passes.

Then there’s a little moment. A shoelace breaks. Or the peanut butter sandwich falls on the floor.

And “gone” floods in, and takes over.

Oh, you mean gone. I can’t see my mom or dad or sister or grandmother any more. Never again.

The full devastation of “gone” rushes in.

In that moment, the most helpful response to that child is not to fix the shoelace or replace the peanut butter sandwich.

Please don’t tell him it’s “just a shoelace” or “just a peanut butter sandwich.”

Silently see his pain. Simply be with him as he feels it.

Long-Awaited Comfort

That day in the basement, I felt the “gone” in a whole new way.

My pain in that moment was believing a man I’d trusted, married and planned a life with had seemingly gone out of his way to hurt me. Deep down, I knew the split was for the best — and still I had to grieve the marriage, the future we’d planned together.

My Dad found himself in a clutch moment with a track record of choking.

But instead of changing the subject or zipping off to the hardware store, he gave me exactly what I needed, and had been craving from him for 40 years.

The calvary rode in, not with a hammer or paintbrush — but with a silent embrace.

Quiet acceptance. Strength and comfort.

Just hold me through this sorrow.

Sit beside me for some of my darkest moments. Remind me that I’m not alone, that I’m loved, and that it will get better.

That’s all.

Finding the Drill Bits

Upstairs in the kitchen, I apologized to Stephanie. “I’m so sorry I snapped at you.”

“Did you?” she said, and chuckled.

“I live with your dad, you know. I hadn’t noticed.”

We did not fix the gutter that day. The house still stands. I drive by it when I visit the charming little town.

A couple of weeks later, I cleaned out a bag I’d forgotten all about and found a whole set of drill bits. Memory flooded back, of packing a bag of tools for a scarecrow-making workshop at Halloween.

To be clear: My ex-husband had nothing to do with the missing drill bits that day, and I wish him only happiness and peace.

Over the next several months and a few years, my dad and I had many real, honest heart-to-heart conversations as I worked through the divorce and fell in love with a wonderful man and his two sons — my stepsons, our sons.

Dad and I talked many times as he faced a terminal diagnosis. Those talks were not all calm nor sunshine — but they were real and honest.

When my stepmother put together the invitation for the memorial open house in Stephanie’s garden, I found my favorite picture of my Dad: A broad smile below his grey mustache. He’s wearing that red sweater, almost a year later, waiting for his French toast in the little café down the hill from my sweet humble Victorian house.

~~~

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