Working With Dad

    As a child my father was who I looked up to, not only then but now as well. He is a very hard working man, takes pride in his accomplishments and loves his family. Now imagine me 12 years old, it's fall and the leaves are starting to turn yellow and orange, we live in the backwoods of Sabattus, Maine in a small 2 story house with 20 acres of land, only about 2 acres of that land is grass and house, the other 18 is a solid wooded forest. In the backyard we had 2 sheds and one of those sheds contained forestry equipment because our house's main source of heat was the wood stove that was in the shop or basement of my home. 
    Whenever it would come time for fall we would take the tractor down into the woods and cut up the trees and split the wood for the stove over the winter. On our way down I would drive the tractor with a little trailer attached and the chainsaws, wedges and chains contained inside of the small trailer. As we got down there I would ask my father why don't we just get a boiler like Memere and Pepere but he told me that it was about tradition, ever since getting the house he had to cut firewood and as he's getting older he has me and my sister to help him cut that wood. And those questions might have seemed stupid at the moment, but now it means a lot to me. I remember spending countless hours every weekend working on the fire wood with my dad. He would teach me how to tune a chainsaw, how to fix the chain, sharpen it, and he would even teach me how to fell a tree with it, it was important to cut a notch in the side of the tree in which direction you wanted the tree to fall in, then you would take the saw to the opposite side of the trunk and cut in from the back to make the tree pivot on that wedge. These times that I spent with my father mean so much to me today, and as an almost adult I think back to that question I had asked him that day and I hate growing up because I'm not there to help him with the fire wood anymore due to work and responsibilities that i need to fulfill as a adult. 
    This encouraged me to go back and take that time off from work to spend with my father helping him with the fire wood during the fall and work with him making his time easier as he gets older and give not only me but him too those lifelong memories with the family that I love and take pride in.

“Surfboards, check. Wetsuits, check. Chainsaw, check.” by Sam Beebe is licensed under CC BY 2.0.