If my father were alive, he’d be disappointed. In me. You. All of us. Disappointed that problem-solving has been reduced to a swipe and a tap. That help is virtual, and algorithms make our decisions. That we have robots delivering boba and no longer count cash and cursive isn’t a thing anymore. Disappointed that I complain when I have to lift my ass off the couch to fetch my wallet for the CVC number on the back of my credit card. I can see him, clear as day, shaking his head and giving me a look that says, your life has become too easy.
My father did everything himself. Whatever needed fixing, he read a manual and figured out the steps to shingle the roof, tar the driveway, pour the concrete, run the electric, upholster the sofa, refurbish the piano, repair the car. He taught his five children to do the same, and we do. Or did. Me, anyway. For a long time, I was eager to troubleshoot a running toilet or shovel a yard of gravel. Now, I text, click a link, and pray for autofill because, let’s face it, online ordering is burdensome.
I believe my father may have reached a breaking point from beyond, intervening by giving me a week so bad I thought someone was poking pins into a rag doll that looked like me. Everything was off: my nervous system, my writing, my overworked husband, my sick daughter, not to mention the ten-day heat wave that had descended upon the city. To compensate for the funk, I started multi-tasking. Overlapping projects to save precious minutes. It seemed to be helping, and then one evening, after everyone had gone to bed, I set the kettle on the counter and turned the spout 45 degrees to fill it with water. I knew it took a mere twenty-seven seconds to fill the pot, but they were twenty-seven seconds I couldn’t lose. I ran out of the room to jump on my computer, only to hear, minutes later, the rush of water hitting the ground.
As I mopped up the flood, the dishwasher began to moan. Error E15 flashed on the panel, but the power button wouldn’t respond; I couldn’t turn it off or get the pump to stop. I woke my husband, and he ran outside, grumbling as he flipped the breakers until he found the right one, making half the kitchen go dark. The dishwasher went dead. I had killed the dishwasher. Another pin in my side.
I’ll fast forward past my unloading of all the dirty dishes and washing them up, past my calls to the manufacturer who didn’t have a service appointment for three weeks, and the certified specialist who wanted five hundred dollars to walk through the door, all the way to the moment when my daughter, still sick at home, presented the idea that we fix the dishwasher ourselves.
“You and me?” I said. “Fix the dishwasher?”
She showed me a YouTube video that demonstrated how to take the machine apart and make the repair. I told her that once in pieces, we’d never be able to put it back together, that it would end up in a landfill, and we’d just have to buy another. But then my dad came to mind, and his lifelong side hustle fixing appliances. How he packed up his tools and drove off on evenings and weekends to repair fridges, stoves, and washing machines. It was extra money for the family, but I saw how he enjoyed the process of identifying the problem, shopping for the part, and making the item work again.
The third time she asked, I agreed. We unscrewed the bottom plates and took apart the front door, lining up the different screws in order. We removed the insulation and used a flashlight to peer into the depths of the machine, locating the Styrofoam disc that had tripped the switch and set off the flood sensor. We cleaned up all the water, dried the parts, reset the float, and put everything back together. When we flipped the breaker, forty-five minutes later, the panel blinked awake, ready to be used.
It’s difficult to describe the euphoria that followed, the rush of dopamine that surged through my body. And it wasn’t just me; my beaming daughter felt the same. Whatever voodoo had been going on all week, it was over. The old dormant receptors had refired in our brains, breaking the spell and reminding us of our agency and capacity to save ourselves. Like the end of the movie Wall-E, when everyone gets out of their HoverChairs and starts caring for Earth again. We were powerful. We could do shit. We didn’t have to bow to the great god, Google, for help.
Well, not exactly. A search of the error code had led my daughter to the video.
But you get the point.
Fix something!
Thanks, Dad.
He was doing the best he could for his family. He couldn't say "I love you" but he made sure we had a car to drive.
We recently moved to the middle of nowhere with two broken bikes. I’ve had these bikes for years and now that we have flat roads with no cars speeding by I wanted to ride! There is not a bike shop within 100 miles. My husband hopped onto YouTube. I held the phone and hit pause whenever a part got tricky. I’m now riding like the wind, usually into the wind, but thrilled we have the almighty YouTube manual. It’s the same thing your dad had, just with some person I can hit pause on to show me how to do it again and again. Thanks for the story, I love, love, love your writing.