The Boat Shop

Seeing it through…the mystic

I stumbled on this shop at the Mystic Seaport Museum for the first time last year.
It was October and early in the day and for some reason it was empty of people
and full of tiny treasures.

Half my life ago I was a woodworker.
My shop was in the basement of a log cabin.
There was an annex of sorts, the back porch, which was covered.
I kept the shaving horse and chopping stump
out there for whittling the green wood down from log to chair parts.
Sitting on that bench I had a private water view
and families of wild creatures along the creek
who shared their songs and dances and whispered dreams with me.

My father worked with wood.
It was a hobby he did alone
and also in basements.
Growing up we moved a dozen times
and I remember a long cardboard box
held together by wide brown Allied moving van tape
in which he carefully stored a wooden ship model kit.
The Cuttysark.

It was off limits to his four wee children
but once or twice I got to see him with an xacto knife trimming tiny parts
and a tweezer pulling black thread through the blocks
until he completed it and built a display case and brought it up to the dining room.

And I remember well the excitement, curiosity and wonder in his eyes
when we visited Mystic for the first time.
When I pause like this to think about it
there are quite a few loves that we shared.

Maybe he is smiling somewhere reading this
and seeing that I have my own long cardboard box and xacto knife
with wee wooden bits of the Cuttysark
waiting for me on the library shelf.