So I wonder what Dad thought when he came home one evening to find that I had dug a 3 foot hole in the lawn, and had stripped aside a 25 foot section of sod. I don\u2019t recall that I discussed my plans to remove a large buried rock with him before attacking the lawn. And I don\u2019t recall any particular distress on Dad\u2019s part when he arrived home to an apparent construction zone. I suspect that he helped me chain the rock to the bumper of the Ford lease car and drag it out of the hole so it could grace a curve in the driveway. The hole got filled, the sod was replaced, and life went on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did manage to get him a bit excited one day. It must have been summer, and he must have been at work. He had mentioned that he was going to replace the gutters on the garage. For most garages, this would not have been a big deal, but this was a 5 car garage with an apartment on the end. To get a head start on the project, I got the great idea that I should use the tractor to pull the gutters off the garage. It worked well, and the gutters twisted free and pulled out the spikes, section by section. I removed all 75 feet of gutter in just a few minutes. What I didn\u2019t realize, until he shared it with me with surprisingly mild irritation on his arrival home, was that his plan was to replace only a 25-foot section of the gutters- not the whole garage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As my own children have grown, I\u2019ve come to realize the level of freedom my father granted me around the house. The memories have encouraged me to be more trusting and appreciative of my children and their projects. I filled his workshop with junk, misplaced his tools and started many ambitious projects that were doomed to failure. My kids\u2019 projects seem to work better than mine did, but the missing tools are a constant factor across the generations. I\u2019ll never achieve Dad\u2019s level of equanimity, but remembering his reactions to my youthful undertakings helps me to exhibit a level of patience that does not come to me naturally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I wonder what Dad thought when he came home one evening to find that I had dug a 3 foot hole in the lawn, and had stripped aside a 25 foot section of sod. I don\u2019t recall that I discussed my plans to remove a large buried rock with him before attacking the lawn. … Continue reading Patience and Trust- Regarding Art Nesse, By Ted Nesse, 2\/7\/2002<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":648,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":819,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/818\/revisions\/819"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}