Captain Pike's Ship Log II

My father’s house has an aluminum awning over the back door. I remember my mother’s complaining that so-and-so’s son was supposed to come over and fix it. One corner of it had been propped up using a long board. The long board was actually two 1 by 3’s tacked together. If the board was not there, the awning would droop down just enough so that the outside screen door would scrape against it. You would be opening the door, expecting the ease of it’s screened masslessness to yield effortlessly, only to be surprised by how jarring a slap in the face by such a flimsy thing could be.
I thought about trying to fix it many times during visits to my parents through that long, warm autumn toward the end of my mother’s fight with cancer. I sort of thought that mom wanted to give a little work to her friend’s son – you know - spread it around a bit. Well, after she died it turned cold and the wind picked up. A couple of times the awning had partially come down and I had to re-position the prop. It became the thing to remark on as an nervous adjunct to coming or going. “Oh well, I guess so-and-so’s kid hasn’t come by and fixed that awning yet”, we’d say, as it undulated in the wind, or when it was discovered to be hanging down. Well, first big snow my girlfriend says “ that thing is coming down” – it was wind driven snow. We walked up to his house and the damn thing just looked awful – all hanging down on one side – so unlike the ever-repairing father I used to know. I felt a pang of guilt – mom was gone and so, it seemed, was any impetus to fix it.
I put the extension cord out through the letter slot of dad’s door, took the aluminum ladder out with some self tapping screws and an electric drill with a Phillips bit in it. The snow was swirling around, the wind was howling, the awning creaked as it blew around every which way. I put two or three screws in my mouth, propped the awning up and started my rickety climb up the ladder, eyes squinting and hands cold already. This is the thing with me – a repeating scheme – it always happens like this: motivated mostly by pain, seeing the awning all askew, and thinking of my mothers hopes to have things right about the house, I finally do the thing I should have done, just as it is becoming too late. Up I go, thinking how it would sound at the emergency room, explaining why I waited till a blizzard before attempting roof maintenance.
But instead of anger, shame or embarrassment, as I climb into the windy precarious position necessary to make the required repair, I have a surprisingly different feeling. I get a satisfying gratification of man surviving the elements; as though working as a space walking, lone astronaut in the harsh cold vacuum of space, repairing the eagle’s antenna while half the earth’s inhabitants watch with held breath.
I remember a time as a kid sailing off Grand Manan with my folks when a sudden summer squall rose and turned a beautiful July jaunt into a driving deluge. My dad quickly donned fowl weather gear and my mom and I went below, out of the storm to heat water for tea. I can still see my dad in yellow up there through the galley way, the boat healed 20 degrees and his Ernest Hemmingway stubble set against the torrent, steering the boat.
It was more pleasurable up there in that pickle than it could have ever been on a beautiful summer day. My God-given procrastination makes me appreciate what sort of man I am.