I’ve FaceTime’d with my mom and dad most days since March 2020.  Sometimes we just raise our eyebrows at one another, shake our heads at the events of the day, and confess we have nothing to say. 

Sometimes my husband Bill has a project going, and if Dad is on the other end, I flip the camera around so Dad can get in on the action.  In addition to being a professional golfer—an unpaid professional golfer—Bill has also dipped into the glories of design and construction geekdom. 

(After I mentioned that Bill was “retired” in my last musing, Bill corrected me with his actual title of “professional golfer,” backslash “unpaid.”) 

The major equipment that Bill-the-engineer frequently uses includes a 3D printer, an electric whet stone to sharpen knives, and most recently a log splitter was added to the mix. One Sunday afternoon this winter, Dad watched Bill sharpen knives on the kitchen counter for twenty minutes.  Satisfying for both guys, I think. 

(Local people, please read this as free kitchen knife sharpening available.) 

I asked Bill if, as a professional golfer, he’s ever bored: never.  And he added that he sleeps without the work worry that chased his dreams for the fifteen years we’ve lived in New England.

New construction is much more thrilling than repairs.  Since we’ve lived in New England, if a fence blew down or the hot water heater stopped working, I used to call a repairman as chances were that Bill was traveling for work when those events occurred.  Now, I text Bill. “Do you want to look at this or shall we call someone?”  If you want to crawl under professional golfer/engineer’s skin, suggest that you call a professional to fix something before a proper consultation with said professional golfer/engineer.

Bill has consulted for start-ups a bit, and in that process, he has learned how to use the latest and greatest design software.  Weekly there is manufacturing happening in the Malcolm house as Bill designs products on the software and then prints them on his 3D printer.  This feels like a little bit of magic dust sprinkled over utilitarian problems. 

My all-time favorite 3D-printed adaptation, from the 25 or so in the last year, is the flashlight holder mounted to the handle of the grill.  The grill sits outside our kitchen window, and on dark winter evenings, we couldn’t see the grill temp from inside.  Bill designed a gadget that holds a little flashlight in place to shine on the grill thermometer.  We can easily see when the grill is hot enough to add meat, and also when it has surpassed 800 degrees—an indication of fire in the hole.  The frog and the rose that Bill 3D-printed for me are quirky and whimsical, but that flashlight bracket made my heart sing on cold winter evenings.  

Today, Bill is designing and printing a rain barrel spout to insert into our down spout so our rain barrel is functional this season.  We bought it a year ago from the town, but it hasn’t functioned properly because the spigot was missing—and it was haphazardly collecting rainwater from the heavens rather than directly from a down spout. 

Last week, Mom and I were comparing to-do lists of those things that should be done but didn’t have a deadline, so they just trailed along in life like an unwanted wart.  I mentioned that I needed to call the town as surely a spigot should’ve been included in the purchase price.  “Have you looked inside the barrel?” Mom asked.  That afternoon, I sent her a picture of three spigots floating in the mucky water inside the barrel. 

In the same Facetime session, I told Dad that Bill was hand splitting logs that were too big to go on the log splitter and that his ax kept getting stuck.  “Well, he needs a splitting maul,” Dad said.  Later that afternoon, I saw a photo on Bill’s computer with the caption something to the effect of “Using an ax versus a splitting maul”—probably a result of the Googled question “Why is my ax getting stuck in the wood such that I have to pry the wood apart with crowbars to get it out?”

We’ve lived our married life without family in the area, and we know no difference as this is the way it’s always been.  Yet these two events made me think how different the day-to-day would be if Mom or Dad occasionally dropped in.  Dad would have immediately noticed the rain barrel and curiously inspected it, noticed the hole in the side where the spigot should be, and had the lid off to look for the spigot.  Similarly, he probably would have said, “Bill, let’s fire up that log splitter and see how it works.”  And in that vein, together they would’ve discovered the logs too big for the splitter, had a discussion over Bill’s chopping ax, and then ridden together to a DIY store to find a splitting maul.  In the end, both jobs are done, just in a rather round-about, independent fashion.

After adequate consultation, we’ve decided to call in professionals to fix the furnace, the fence, and the lawn.  For there are down spouts to be designed and golf to be played.