“Because I want a table that only fits the people I choose,” I replied. Also because I like the sound a plane makes when it skates a board just right, the way shavings curl like ribbon on a present you are making for the person you will be in five years. The instructor, a patient man named Walt who wore pencils behind both ears, taught us to square lumber with more humility than I’d learned in years of spreadsheets. “Wood moves,” he kept reminding us. “Plan for the swell.”
On the third Thursday, I almost didn’t go. The temp outside read 9°F. My heater clicked like a metronome with asthma. I told myself to stay home. I went anyway. In the warm sawdust, I met a woman named Mina who was building shelves for a van she was converting and a man named Jonah who made spoons because his grandmother had taught him that a spoon is a tiny boat for the broth that heals the world. I told them I was making a table and didn’t explain why. The mallet felt honest in my hand. By the end of class I had mortised four legs into a frame that would bear weight without complaint—a thing I was learning not to be.