When the Beer was Brewing

Standing beside me…

Sometimes I imagine my father standing beside me still, not gone, only flying in a sky I have not learned to see. I would tell him that the boy he left in December, when the world was changing shape beneath my feet, kept going. I would tell him I learned to fix things, not only engines and boards and broken corners of the house, but harder things too: a life, a purpose, a family, a heart that had to keep beating without his voice nearby. I would tell him about the work I have done, the people I have helped, the small dents I have made in the universe by refusing to drift. I would tell him about my daughter, and how love becomes its own kind of craftsmanship when you raise a child with patience, courage, and wonder. And maybe he would smile the way he did when the beer was brewing and the tools were out, and say that nothing worth building is ever finished, only handed forward. Then I would understand that I had been speaking to him all along—in every repaired thing, every brave choice, every laugh at the table, every dream I refused to set down.