Bittersweet memories about a lost friend blossom
Just in time for fall, I build a nice flower box. That says so much about my life, I don’t even know where to begin. A flower box in fall? Makes no sense whatsoever.
I’m not that good with my hands, but I need to use them anyway. Besides, only the human thigh is smoother than a nice piece of cabinet-grade redwood.
So I build a flower box.
A flower box pretty much exceeds my skills, which are better suited to backyard decks or framing closets — wham-bam projects that don’t require a finish carpenter’s steady touch. I double up on the old woodworker’s credo that you measure twice and cut once.
I want to build this project inside the house, fuss over it in that sweet lazy hour just after dinner, or wrestle with it immediately after waking a little too early. But fearing it will be like one of those too-big boats that men build in their basements then can’t get up the stairs, my wife insists I build the flower box outside, under the harsh glare of God.
I’ve had a problem with God lately. Two years ago, he took my friend Don Rhymer for no apparent reason, and there have been too many spotty performances since.
No one gets forever, but you should get more than 50 years. My pastor says we shouldn’t expect God to give us more than he gave his own son — 33 years. But those were odd circumstances, softened by a showy resurrection.
So I’m still frosted and confused over Rhymer’s death from cancer at age 51. I’m dealing with it through this flower box.
Some guys march to different drummers, others dance to their own minor keys. That was Rhymer. His favorite retreat from the stupidities of screenwriting was a little cottage near the water, an apostrophe of a place, barely even there.
At this little Newport Beach cottage he would host summer holidays, build batches of margaritas, sizzle steaks on the grill. What a golf course was to Palmer, what Wembley was to Laver, this beach house was to Rhymer.
After he passed, buddies vowed to help his widow keep the place up against the effects of corrosive salt air, but there was nothing we could do for the rotting flower box out front. Better to build a new one at home, where I’d have sawhorses and power tools and the luxury of time.
I settled on a side of the house that got the afternoon shade. Went to work. Built a flower box. Remembered Rhymer.
The flower box is a triumph of Irish engineering, a little higher on one end than the other. A big believer in solid bottoms, I doubled the flooring, then smothered it in roofing tar to keep out the wet. What the flower box lacks in finesse, it makes up for in sheer heft. In a pinch, you could sail it to Korea.
You know, middle age comes to us on cat paws, then pounces. One day you’re 35 and playing 36 holes, the next you’re hearing your friends talk about hip replacements and exit strategies at work.
Look at the bright side, my friend: At least you didn’t have to suffer that.
Damn, I miss you. Miss riffing about how nobody wears ascots anymore or owns a water bed. Miss a sympathetic ear when I go on and on about how much I hate Shonda Rhimes shows.
“How do you think the American Revolution would’ve played out on social media?” I’d ask if he were still around.
And Rhymer would start riffing about Paul Revere’s ride, or savage comments about the Redcoats.
“OMG, did you see what Thomas Gage was wearing?”
Two years later, I still need to chat him up like this, mock the fools who take themselves too seriously, vent about our spouses, catch up on the kids.
How rare is true friendship? How do you even build new friendships after a certain age?
Like this flower box, friendship is a loopy art form — misfit corners and lots of spackle.
Meanwhile, like Rhymer’s memory, I can’t let this flower box go. Where two coats of paint would do, I use three. Where a flat front would suffice, I add slight swells that mimic the ocean’s waves, then sand the edges a little too much. Then a little more. For two weeks, my fingertips smell of trees.
Finally, I fill the box with flowers and leave it on the porch.
For you, old friend.
twitter: @erskinetimes
