Canadian Mennonite
Volume 8, Number 12
June 14, 2004

A tale of two desks

Kelowna, B.C.


The night last August when the Okanagan Mountain Park fire burst across Bellevue Creek and into our area of Kelowna, Marg and I were safely across the lake, having been offered hospitality by good friends.

During the day we had seen the dramatic progress of the fire northward along Okanagan Lake and towards the homes. During a restless night, I was overwhelmed by a flood of images. In the morning, two images remained: a desk that my father had built around the time I was born in the “dirty thirties,” and another desk—my first effort as a teenager, built with dad’s help.

As we heard the news about the devastation—over 80 homes destroyed that night—we prepared for bad news about our home. I thought again about the two pieces of furniture. Why? They were only “things,” covered by insurance, though hardly replaceable.

I had not seen my father make his desk out of apple box ends and scraps of wood during a time when he could not get work and had a large family to feed. And yet he had built a desk that stands in our front hall and is the envy of my siblings. It tells a story of courage and imagination during a difficult time.

The desk’s intricate construction symbolizes the resourcefulness and caring of our parents, who came out of want and danger in Russia only to find themselves in the prairie dustbowl of the thirties.

The other desk, a double pedestal desk built from two sheets of plywood without hardware, is neither as intricate nor as beautiful as my father’s. It was my own design. Father showed me how I could use materials economically. When my finished product threatened to break in half if lifted, he showed me how to build in the necessary framing—the infrastructure—to keep it together.

I don’t know how much my desk helped in my studies. Father wanted his children to have gainful employment, and it was only after his early death that several of us began further studies. The desk was consigned to the basement and there it is today, the centre of operations for “Opa’s railway.” Father’s, meanwhile, greets visitors in the entrance hall.

Perhaps these pieces of furniture are “just things,” but they have taken on a rich symbolism for me. They tell me about my family and about myself. I have been brought closer to my father by meditating on the love he demonstrated in making things. He did not always succeed in communicating in words, but when I consider how he helped me to make something that was really mine, I begin to understand what was beyond my perception earlier.

As Christians we know about the power of symbolism—the power of the cross, for example—but we are inclined to take it for granted. Images too often become clichés. And so it is remarkable when a comparison or metaphor suddenly appears in our imagination, in all its power.

That is what happened that night last August, when fire swept through our district and we assumed our home was lost. I thought of many things, but my imagination would not let go of two desks that told so much about me and my relationship with my father.—Vic Doerksen

Letters

Pilgrim Pieces

by Tim Wiebe

All in a days work

My cousin Joel and I have a long-standing joke. It usually starts with a bit of dialogue.

“Tim! I need to come over to your place and pick up a few tools. People are bugging me to do some major repair work.”

“Sure thing, Joel. They’re yours as soon as I’m done with the engine overhaul I’m planning.”

We usually continue in our borderline construction/mechanical vein for quite some time, before breaking down in laughter. Neither of us, you see, is a particularly handy fellow.

Given this information, I was a little reluctant at first to accept Joel’s invitation to join him at Camp Moose Lake, in Manitoba’s Whiteshell region, for its annual work-a-thon. Joel, however, was not to be denied.

“Tim,” he said, “this experience will put you in touch with the real you. On top of that, the food is fantastic.”

Well, that clinched it. I filled a booklet with sponsors’ signatures, sent two of our kids off on Friday evening with friends who had signed up for the event, and began my own journey to the east early on Saturday morning.

I arrived just in time for a huge breakfast: bacon and eggs, quiche, toast, fruit, cereal and lots of goodwill. Thus fortified, I looked for the lowest-tech job possible.

That turned out to be raking detail with the young people. Trying to appear hip and youthful, I kept up with the teenagers as best I could.

In the morning, I made a Mennonite connection as we raked the yard of a long-time Moose Lake supporter. In the afternoon, I observed the cottage culture in action as we helped an upwardly mobile doctor and his family get ready for the summer. His kids were bouncing on the trampoline and said “thanks!” in so many varied and irritating ways that I was ready to do something actively nonviolent to disciple them.

Fortunately, we filled our leaf-trailer before I did anything drastic. I enjoyed the trip to the nuisance grounds and reflected on how good the weekend had been so far. Emily was with the other youth on raking detail and Steve was helping a few carpentry types re-panel a cabin.

Once we reached the dump, I jumped lithely off the trailer, began pushing off the leaves—and stepped on a rake that had fallen from the vehicle. The rake straightened, smashed me in the face, and re-arranged my glasses to an off-center locale. (I will not indicate left or right of centre lest someone infer a political bias.)

There was no major harm done. In fact, I was rather proud of my injury. I felt as though I’d sacrificed something to take part in the weekend. I felt even more proud, however, in a self-effacing, Mennonite sort of way when I saw cousin Joel cutting lumber as part of the cabin panel crew.

As he took a break between pieces, he looked at me, grinned, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Who’dda thunk?”

I grinned back. I smelled the farmer sausage supper that would mark the end of our working day and thought to myself, “Now a knife and fork—those are two tools I know how to handle.”

They start arriving in the mail around April. Brightly-coloured announcements, with a drawing of people playing softball or running races. I’m talking, of course, about invitations to family reunions.

(Here in Newfoundland, when I tell people I’m Mennonite, they think for a minute and then ask, “Does that mean you have two wives?” Imagine the reunions I could go to if I did!)

I realize that my experience may not be the same as yours. Then again, there may be a few universal characteristics of family reunions.

The site of the reunion is decorated with the ever-expanding family tree (although it’s a child or two behind and has some unsightly blemishes where cousin Leroy’s divorce and remarriage is documented).

Behind the tree are the pictures of ancestors, solemn women with sensible shoes and stern bearded men who look like they’d split a conference at the drop of a hat (or a head covering).

The first order of business is the food. The available selection illustrates the familiar anarchy of the potluck. Dishes range from macaroni and sardine casserole to a jello-pretzel salad that proves harder to get rid of than old copies of Sing and Rejoice. All of this is washed down with institutional-strength koolaid in some bright colour that stains.

Then there is the after-dinner entertainment, as promised by the invitation. I’m not suggesting that it isn’t of some interest, but how many times can one stand to see Uncle Frank’s slides of his trip to Switzerland? Especially when each one looks like the previous one—slightly out of focus scenes of cows with bells standing on hills, accompanied by a person whose identity becomes a source of lively debate.

But we dutifully watch them. From the muggy darkness a voice offers, “That’s Lloyd and Millie’s boy, isn’t it?” Someone else counters with, “Nope, he’s allergic to cows.”

Then a third chimes in, “You know, he looks like that second cousin I met at World Conference in France.” And so on until Uncle Frank flips to a new slide of a different cow, with a different unidentified person.

Then, to remind us of the importance of competition among friends, there are the mandatory games and races. The perfect game is one that can combine some useless skill (such as walking with a spoon in one’s mouth) with a messy item (such as an egg). Anything with a water balloon will be an instant hit.

And who can forget the conversation that brightens a family reunion? As a child, I got tired of the dizzying monotony of the same comments over and over.

The first 18 years of my life I listened to the comment,” Oooh, my, but he’s growing like a weed, isn’t he?” or “So what grade are you going into next year?” But nowadays, caught in the midst of yet another debate on the “homosexuality issue,” I wouldn’t mind a bit of monotony about grades or growth rates.

Clearly, one of the most jarring elements of any family reunion is meeting those cousins who were once little urchins you scorned, but who are now responsible members of society.

I walk around shaking my head, thinking, “Little cousin Eddie couldn’t stack two boards without getting a splinter, and now he’s running a dairy farm,” or “Cousin Emma never had the money for a popsicle, and now she’s a stock investment analyst!”

I always thought of family reunions as Sunday school picnics without the sermonette. But I suspect that, despite their shortcomings, people go to reunions, year after year, with even more anticipation than they attend Sunday school picnics.

I guess that just proves once again the old adage, “Blood is thicker than baptismal water.”—August 1, 1994

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