We’re on the brink of high season over here. The air is hot and wet, the kitchen is full of flies, and I swat at them with a dish towel, trying to hit one while simultaneously shooing the chickens back out the doorway where they appear over and over again, waiting to be invited in to gobble up the inevitable crumbs left on the floor.
“We need a screen door!” I yell to Anthony, who is perched at the very top of a ladder nailing clapboards onto the house.
“I can’t think about anything else until the siding is done.”
Fair enough, I think to myself, retreating back into the kitchen, back to the buzzing, to sit down and write this. The flies are quickly drowned out by the sound of sawing. Rui learned to use the jigsaw this summer and has claimed the work table just outside the kitchen, where he’s busy making his wares for our beloved and impending High Season Market.
We’ve been running this market for six years now from an old grange hall overlooking the ocean in Port Clyde, always on the second weekend in August. It’s become the pinnacle of summer for all of us, but especially for the kids, who begin planning and scheming in the dead of winter about what they’ll bring to sell. Two summers ago, at the ripe old age of five, Rui started cutting forks and knives from scraps of wood he’d dig out of the pile behind the house. It was extraordinary to watch. His tiny hands confidently worked a Japanese pull saw and a little scout knife, cutting out rough shapes before patiently whittling each edge smooth. We’d find him up early every morning, leaning over the work table we’d set up in the living room (which, at the time, looked more like a barn than a living room) and he’d stay there for hours. By the time the market came around he’d made more than twenty pieces, and he sold nearly every one by himself. I watched from a nearby doorway as he explained how he’d made them, accepted payment with seriousness, then flashed a tiny smirk as he tucked each bill into his little money box. if you were wondering, yes, I cried. The following year he added wooden swords to his repertoire. This year, after learning to use the jigsaw, he’s entered full production mode, duplicating the things he likes best and making more than ever before. Every now and then he recruits one of us to sand an edge or cut a shape when his arm gets tired, but mostly he’s simply cranking them out.
Rui has always had an instinct for making things. He’s careful, strong, and surprisingly precise. From the time he was very little we tried hard to nurture that instinct rather than shy away from it, which is easier said than done because watching a tiny child handle dangerous tools can be terrifying.
When he was two, we noticed he could lift a wooden mallet over his head and bring it down squarely onto a stump, perfectly mimicking Anthony splitting kindling. Not long after, we gave him a small hatchet (not too sharp, not too dull) and cut quarter-sized logs for him to split into kindling of his own. At four he got his first scout knife and spent long afternoons on the front steps whittling spears alongside his brother. We sat nearby, intervening only when necessary. Cut away from yourself. Keep your knees behind your work. Slow down. Then we’d let him figure the rest out.
When he was five he begged me to buy an old axe head from the antique store. He carved a handle from a young tree he’d cut himself, and Anthony showed him how to fit the head, drive in the wedge, and tighten it again when it inevitably loosened. Somehow that little project became our everyday axe. It’s the one we still reach for whenever we split kindling.
