The Thing That Really Helps

Snowshoeing to evening chores

The truck died on Saturday, and I suppose it could have been worse, as I was no more than a mile from home. Of lesser convenience was the fact that it sputtered to a halt while towing the tractor behind it, and furthermore just as I was entering the arc of a blind corner on a main road. To put it in the mildest of terms, it was not a great place to be stranded with so many large and unyielding pieces of equipment.

I retrieved Penny, unloaded the tractor, decoupled the trailer, wrapped one end of a chain around the truck’s plow frame and the other around the tractor’s drawbar, and began towing the truck to safety. The boys are ever eager to bear witness to such antics, so they rode in the cab of the truck with my wife, and I must admit it improved my mood considerably to glance over my shoulder at my family, shoulder-to-shoulder across the bench seat of our old Ford, me pulling them up the road at 14 mph in search of a plowed lot large enough to navigate a change of direction. Some families go to the movies or to an amusement park, but not us. Oh, no: We go jaunting about in our absurd conveyance of malfunctioning machinery.

Once the truck was situated, I rigged up the trailer ball on the tractor, hitched up to the trailer, and pulled that to safety. And then, to what I’d like to think is my great credit, I almost relaxed. Everything and everyone was out of harm’s way. True, the truck was broken. True, by the time I’d fiddled with it enough to realize it needed a new fuel pump, which necessitates removal of the turbo assembly, which therefore punts it beyond the realm of repair work I am willing to tackle in our snowbound driveway, I’d lost the majority of the day. True, it will cost multiple hundreds of dollars to put the old belching beast back on the road. And true, at the frantic apex of my stress level, which coincided with the moment I first stepped from the driver’s seat to appraise the whole sorry situation, I dipped briefly into a morass of self-pity. If not for the soothing support of my family and the view of them riding high in the truck’s cab as the tractor chugged us all up the road, I might have dwelled there.

I sometimes think that people who want to live this life (or some version thereof) place far too much emphasis on the hard skills it demands. Truth is, nothing we do here requires an exceptional degree of skill or cleverness. I realize I should not admit this, what with a certain book to sell and whatnot, but hey. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. Now, I’m not saying there are no hard skills involved, only that none of these skills ask for much more than a bit of dogged persistence and the occasional guiding hand to acquire. In my experience, it’s not expertise that enables this life. Perhaps expertise eventually develops, but only as an afterthought. Only as the result of human resourcefulness and simple curiosity, so basic as to be available to all. Or most, anyway.

Oh, and there’s one other thing that really helps: Equanimity. And along with it, an ability (or is it simple willingness?) to find mirth in the small, frequent absurdities of our days. I remember a few years ago, when Melvin had a long extension ladder leaning against his barn. A gusting wind had blown the ladder sideways, so that it leaned at a compound angle. It remained that way for multiple days, and it finally occurred to me that perhaps I ought offer my assistance in righting the ladder, for as any of you who’ve wrangled extension ladders know, height is of tremendous advantage. I am six-foot, three-inches tall. Melvin is… well, not that tall.

One afternoon, I asked Melvin if he’d like me to help straighten the ladder. Nope, he said. I like it that way. It reminds me not to take life too seriously. 

You know what? I was sort of sorry when he finally took the ladder down.