The bond of craftsmanship

 My father and I both love making stuff. It doesn’t matter whether it’s wood, metal, foam, or something random lying around; we both find immense satisfaction in using our hands to form something new from our materials. This mutual interest is a double edged sword. On one hand, we have something in common which we can share. On the other hand, we almost always end up arguing when we start talking or working together on a project. These arguments almost always stem from horrible communication and our different priorities.

I don’t know how we manage it, but we can always start an argument when making something, no matter how small it is. I could literally be drilling a hole into a plank, and we’d find some way to start bickering. For these more technical projects where we have to collaborate and he’s just giving me instructions, our arguments normally start from my lack of prowess. To be fair, I can use most tools alright, but you aren’t going to see me on any carpentry shows anytime soon. Toss that around with my father’s decades of experience, exacting standard, and short fuse, and our projects morph into a ticking time bomb. While nobody really enjoys getting yelled at about the angle of lighting, the proper drilling speed, or the way you hold a screwdriver, I always manage to learn. And what’s funny to me is when I work with my friends, I will get a little voice yelling in my head (which I imagine is absolutely hollering in my dad’s head whenever he works with me) whenever I see them do anything not up to my father’s standard. However, call it the supremacy of the next generation, because I haven’t yelled at them. Yet. 

Most of the time though, our arguments aren’t as simple as the proper method of hammering in a nail. Instead, our arguments are ideological. It may sound bizarre that something such as construction would have ideologies, but my dad and I have very different styles. My father tends to look for the technique which would have the greatest chance of success and require the least effort. On the other hand, I have an idealized final product in my head, which I will go through hell and back to accomplish. In other words, my father is more approach-based, while I am more product-based. Thus, we rarely see eye-to-eye from the get-go and we can only agree on a compromise after half an hour of argument. Calling it a compromise is honestly quite generous, since I only take a step back when I realize his method is a lot better, and he only takes a step back once he’s given up on trying to convince me. 

Some may view this as a detrimental relationship. Maybe like water and oil forced to be in the same container. However, I’m glad that we work together despite the quarrels. At the end of the day, we always find a middle ground, and the satisfaction of creation is able to mend any strained fibers of our relationship. I feel fortunate that we have at least one hobby we can share with each other, since my dad hates reading fantasy and hates watching the shows I enjoy. He also can’t learn the controls to any games, so we have never played any video games together. While we both love music, I don’t like singing with other people, and our skill differential is too high for instruments (my dad isn’t at a level where he can learn cello duets with piano). Thus, construction is the single bridge between what seems like two islands, and it’s the only time I’m able to work on something with my dad. That’s why I think, after each project, we always pick up our tools, dust ourselves off, and start to think about what else we could make together.