After I saw Lucas in the hospital, what struck me was that I had no idea how to be a grandfather. Do I spoil this person at every turn? Do I feed him all of the foods he isn't allowed to eat at home? Do I take him to the shop at age 3 and teach him how to drive nails and use the scroll saw? Well, I am sure that all of these are things that as a grandpa I am supposed to do, but how can I tell? Is there a book? Oh so many questions. Of course, there is no instruction manual and it is all things that we will just have to learn, just like we learned how to be parents. Just like Andrew and Lyndsey are learning right now. I remember that like it was yesterday. We brought Andrew home and I had never held a baby before. Now we had one. Even though I was quite sure that Andrew was trying to communicate with us from his first day at home, we had no idea what he was asking for. It took time, and as you learned and thought you were moving forward, you soon found out that you really didn't know that much.
Then over time, slowly at first, and then with more and more speed, what you knew and what you could interpret grew at an alarming rate and it all made sense. Until, of course, the late teenage years, but that is another story all on its own. By the time we had mastered the "kid" language we had discovered that much of it is universal. Now I can sit in a restaurant, hear a child crying and know if they are mad, hungry, or need their diaper changed. It really is just another language, but there is no class that you take, or book that you read that helps you to understand. You just have to jump in and figure it out. That is what we did with Andrew and that is what he and Lyndsey are doing with Lucas, and it will get easier with time. Hang in there, new parents. Nobody told you it would be this hard because it may have chased you off. Just hang in there. Having a new baby is pretty wonderful when you have a chance to get used to it.
Okay, speaking of a new addition that will make you happy, I added a piece of equipment to the Toybox last month.
In 1990, at a Woodworking Show, I had my first chance to look at this piece of equipment. I remember, leaning on the Powermatic table saw that had just come to market, with Chuck Wolfe from Wolfe Machinery, thinking how great it would be to own one of these. Now, twenty six years later, I finally bought one. It came in at a birth weight of 635 pounds and took a truck with a lift-gate to get it to the Toybox, but now it is in and functional and I know it will produce a lot of sawdust and parts to build things out of. All of my excuses about starting on Sara's new kitchen cabinets had better come to an end now. There is just no excuse left to not get work done ... unless of course it is the overwhelming fact that I need a shaper. More to come there.
I hope that as 2016 ended, and we all looked at the extensive list of people that we lost this year, we also had good reasons to focus on all that was good for us in the year. I am cautiously optimistic about 2017, both business and personal, looking for more good news in the year than bad. I hope that this will be your case as well.
