DAD’S L-SQUARE RULER
“He spent hours in his shop calculating, measuring, cutting, recutting.”
My dad was the kind of guy who would drive 15 miles out of town to get gas for a few cents cheaper. He was a woodshop teacher and a fan of Tom Clancy and a lover of puns and bird-watching, but more than anything he was a perfectionist. When I was in elementary school, he taught me how to draw a straight line for my math homework. “Use a steady hand and follow the edge of the ruler. Draw from point A to point B with the same amount of pressure. Lines must be straight. And accurate.”
Dad’s home workshop was packed with woodworking tools arranged alphabetically on a pegboard wall, paint cans organized in rows by color, project patterns in neatly labeled folders. When you opened the door, the aroma of cedar, pine and oak sawdust beckoned. To this day, every time I walk into a lumber store and smell that smell, I see him bent over his worktable: blue Dickies pants, dusty grey-blue shop coat, pocket protector holding mechanical pencils. He spent hours in his shop calculating, measuring, cutting, recutting. His wooden toys, puzzles and other objects were works of art, each piece fitting exactly.
For me, the woodshop was full of possibilities for creativity and the joy of making something by hand. The discard bin was a source of novel building materials—random wooden shapes I arranged into futuristic cities. But for Dad everything in the discard bin was a mistake.
Even when we played Pictionary, he would take forever to make the perfect drawing—never mind that in the end it would be so small, we could hardly see it. As a teenager, I started to wonder: What had happened to him or within him that made him set such high standards for himself—standards he never believed he could measure up to? Why was he so inflexible? I vowed that my life wouldn’t follow a straight-line path like his. I wanted a free-flowing scribble of a life, not the strict point-A-to-point-B I watched him labor to achieve.
Dad passed away in 2012 without my ever understanding what made him tick. For many years, I judged him harshly for his perfectionism. Couldn’t he have wavered just an inch, been a bit spontaneous, been easier on himself—and the rest of us?
When I was in seventh grade and wanted to be a biochemist, Dad helped me set up several chromatography tubes—long glass tubes filled with different substances through which I’d send all types of liquid so I could measure how fast it traveled and how much made it through. Together we gathered different kinds of sawdust, sand from the garden and humus from the woods to fill the tubes. Together we decided what liquids to test, and set up a chart for recording the data. It was precision work and he seemed to like doing it with me, and that made me happy in a way I’ve never forgotten.
But even if I’d kept one of those tubes, I still think I'd treasure Dad’s L-square ruler more. I keep it as a reminder that there are good things about a straight line. My straight-line dad taught me the value of being organized and accurate, how to set and work toward goals, the sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from crafting something well, be it a woodworking project or a moment in life. Most important, despite his own difficulty with this, I learned from him that it's okay to make a mistake and try again. It would have been a mistake to regard Dad with judgment forever. So I tried compassion. And that feels right.
—Kathryn Randall
Kathryn Randall writes and lives in Wisconsin. She blogs about nature and science at www.kathrynrandall.com.
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It took a bit for me to read this one. Typical for life with any autoimmune conditions.
I am loving the way the compassion came from allowing his imperfect perfectionist ideals to be a way to learn it is okay as none of us reach that level.
Dad’s, where many of us are concerned is perfect no matter what. Mom’s sometimes are much more difficult too forgive it even understand.
Both are true in my life. That is okay too. Maybe tomorrow I will see what made her tick. In the meantime Daddy was always the perfect one to me.
My father was a machinist and loved to work with his hands - he made wrought iron end tables and a coffee table and a plant holder complete with a copper box in it to catch water from the plants - my youngest brother still has all of them. He uses them on his patio and removed the glass tops on each of them with wood.