Posting Number 200

Mom loved wood. Her love for fine grain and texture is reflected throughout the house my parents built. There is the hardwood floor in the living room and the master bedroom. She labored over the finish during a pregnancy with Mark. The pecky cypress paneling is a major feature of the house, every board cleaned and sanded by Mom’s hands, then coated with Waterlox. Every spring and fall the floors were paste waxed and buffed while the cracks and creases of the paneling were dusted and polished. And the dining room table – a huge slab of wood sanded to perfection before Mom applied nineteen coats to the high gloss surface.

As much as Mom loved wood, she loved trees. No wonder she gave Dad hell for chopping trees around the perimeter of the yard. Fortunately she didn’t see the elm die and Dad had it taken down this spring. When I came home in May the only thing left of the stately tree was a five foot piece of trunk—the piece that grew closest to the ground.

The base had a unique shape. Seventy-five rings recorded years of cold winters, wet springs, dry summers and splendid falls. And a twin heart was set off-center. It was destine to be cut up and rolled down the hill into the woods. (Dad has plenty of wood stacked around the house for the fireplace. We even gave away the two trees we took down a couple of weeks ago.)

I envisioned a wall piece, a thin slab cut from the irregular base shaped by the jutting arms that were once leads to roots. Robin and Dad using a chainsaw too small for the job managed to hack off a twelve inch piece. They set it up on its end to dry.

Mark and Dad loaded it into the wheelbarrow and carted it into the basement a few weeks ago. When Robin was here this past weekend, she discovered ants milling around the slab.

Dad and I wrestled the heavy block of wood outside so I could sand the surface and spray it for ants. They evacuated carrying eggs, but the poison kept them from getting too far. I spent most of the afternoon sanding the surface with my grandfather’s Craftman sander, a heavy duty machine that can’t be found in this day and age of blue and yellow tools from China. After I sanded out the ridges left by the chainsaw with 36 grit paper and I took 50 and 120 grit to smoothed the surface.

It is a handsome piece of wood that will make a fine coffee table in a place that MAYBE one day I might have. A complement to my buffalo skull and Navajo and Tibetan rugs.

Mom would have been happy to know that the dead elm tree didn’t end up as nothing more than firewood, or a termite and fungus haven. As I applied her father’s sander to the wood I thought she was smiling on my effort.

364 days without Mom.