A Handy Man
“If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
~Red Green
When my husband Walt and I first began dating, he introduced me to a Canadian comedy called “The Red Green Show.” In hindsight, I think it was his litmus test of his to see if I was worthy of his affections. A simple show, yet extremely clever, the main character, Red Green, is a handy man who is not very handy. Episode after episode he tries to use every day handyman items to do insane things and fails, yet you know that the writers are actually quite handy themselves, they’re just poking fun at the average man who is no longer able to be handy at all. I thought it was hysterical and Walt appreciated that about me and thus we lived happily ever after.
Given my own father built our home on weekends, he was an electrical engineer during the week, I too had my own litmus test for a man—you had to know how to build and fix things. So it would be that Walt and I were perfectly matched, I liked his sense of humor and he was handy. Very handy. I sometimes call him the last handy man on the planet, or at least of his generation. He’s the eldest of us Gen Xers, born in 65, and probably the last to have shop class in high school. Since then, we’ve systematically removed the arts of homebuilding, repair, electricity, and plumbing from our children’s curriculum. His own father was an electrician and taught him much, but Walt told me recently that most of what he can do he learned in shop class. By the time I was in high school, that was the class that the “academically challenged” took and within a few years after that, it was removed completely, seen as a sexist and demoralizing path for anyone, male or female, to pursue.
That might have been folly on our part.
Tonight is the one year anniversary of the last night I would spend in my home and just like a year ago, I’m alone. Last year, Walt was in Portland, delivering our eldest to his apartment and setting him up for his covid-19 senior year. I was supposed to join them, but due to the fact the power was out and the air filled with smoke, I stayed behind with the animals and our younger son. Alone that night in the intense heat and smoke, I went to bed at 10pm thinking everything was okay. A few hours later, a voice woke me up and told me to check the voice messages…the rest is history. A year later, I’m safe inside of our second rental, this time by the sea, but yet again alone because Walt is up at the property running conduit and wire for the electrician who should, I hope, come this Monday to hook it all up to the outlets and new panel board.
I’m surprised at how I feel today. This isn’t the day my home burned. It isn’t even the day I found out my home burned. Instead, it’s the last night on my property with Big Doug, the last night in my comfy bed, the last evening putting the goats in their shed at night, the last day feeding the chickens, the last time I will see Sebastian my cat, haunting me because I know what’s about to happen next and I wish to God I could forget it all. 8/19/2020 was the worst day of my life as I’ve known it. Yes, I’ve had other terrifying times, but even falling from a swing and shattering my hip bone was easier, because at least then, my body took me in and out of consciousness to manage the pain. Waking to listen to the evacuation voice message and realizing I was already late, my body went into a different mode; one of panic. Fleeing while singed leaves fell from the sky, unable to fit all the animals into the VW bug, alone without my husband to help me, focused entirely on my nineteen year old son, worried we might get stuck on the mountain, this was just the beginning. The next day, I had to find a hotel room, check us in, get my son and the dogs settled, listen to both equine rescue and the SPCA say they wouldn’t go to my home to save my goats and cat, knowing I should go up there myself but frozen, unable to leave my son’s side while his father was still out of town. Even this was nothing compared to dinner time, alone in the hotel room while my son worked, receiving a text that said my neighborhood was on fire and another text that my husband, who was still trying to get home to us, was stuck in Vacaville, in a neighborhood also evacuating from fire, unable to use I80 because the fire had jumped it.
I knew my home was burning. I knew my animals were burning. I feared my husband would also burn. Thanks to my friend Jillian, who told me to find someone who could help my husband navigate the area, and my friend Jeffrey, who answered the call to do so, Walt got back to us by 11:30 that night.
There are many sad things that happened from 8/20/20 on, but there has also been joy, friendship, amazing coincidences, and delight. On 8/19/20, there was nothing but fear and pain and a sense of aloneness I’ve never felt before, as if I’d been abandoned at my greatest time of need by all who knew me, and tonight, on the eve of that day, I’m feeling it all again and I just want to close my eyes and pretend it never happened. It’s like a few movies I love—I watch them time and time again, but there’s a scene I can’t handle, so I skip it or leave the room until it’s over. I don’t want to forget everything, I just don’t want to feel that day again.
My husband isn’t here with me tonight because he has to work on the land since there aren’t enough licensed handy men in Santa Cruz county. PG&E took five months to turn on my power and the day after, the electrician I had lined up decided to go out of town, to Egypt of all places, until the end of the month. Ironically, the hot tub just arrived and the tiny house will be here by the time the electrician is ready to work up there again. I scrambled and found another electrician, but he’s really busy so Walt has to do everything except the actual hookups—trenching, conduit, materials purchase, etc. I can’t get my permits without licensed contractors, but they’re booked for months. Sure, it’s saving us money, but the truth is, what would I do if he weren’t so handy? This isn’t about DIY, he could do that if he didn’t work a day job to make ends meet. He’s working on the property after his paid job until the sun sets because there aren’t enough people in the trades in the area to rebuild 900+ homes and repair countless others who were partially damaged by the fire.
I can’t help wonder if this is yet another one of our good ideas gone bad. When Walt was a kid, boys took shop and girls took home economics. This was obviously sexist but rather than make everyone take both, when I arrived in high school, they got rid of it all. Instead everyone was encouraged to go to college and to avoid the trades and homemaking. Only those who couldn’t graduate from high school were encouraged to build civilization and raise children.
Think about it. We deemed the building of civilization as unworthy of us. I’m sure there’s some anti-classist theory to support it, but I wonder, did we throw the baby out with the bathwater? As yet another town burns here in California and Oregon’s fires make it unhealthy to breathe in that state and Haiti suffers from both an earthquake and a tropical storm, was it really a good idea to encourage not one, but two generations to abandon the trades? I’ve written these essays documenting this year as a climate refugee both as a means for me to heal but also to ask those who aren’t yet climate migrants to think harder—is the path we’re on smart? In the age of climate change and eco-disaster, maybe we did something really stupid when we decided that “thinking” rather than building was the only means to a good life?
California is burning down, plain and simple. The Facebook group I belong to that is exclusively for those who lost their homes to wildfire has grown in the past few weeks and that’s really horrible. As I welcome these new folks to the club no one really wants to be a part of, I tremble. I wish my husband was here tonight, but I’m grateful he’s able bodied to get this done. I don’t feel any guilt, I’ve put in hours and hours, my entire life for a year, to this project. This is his way to contribute. But he’s doing this after working 7am-8pm everyday during the week not because he wants to, he has to or it won’t happen. No one else is there to do it, I literally can’t hire anyone. I’m so grateful he has these skills. It makes all the difference.
I settle into this knowing. He’s here with me even if he’s sweating on the property. I’m not alone. I’m grateful beyond measure. I’m glad my eldest is joining him on weekends to learn. I’m glad somehow he taught the youngest enough to install a fan in his room and build all his furniture for his apartment. It’s a start. Like Red Green always said, “If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
Walter, you are both of those things, and more.