Sam peered inside at her childhood. Layers of dust, dirt and debris sat inside. Her tools still hung neatly although a couple had fallen when their hooks fell. Sawdust littered the ground under the layers of dirt. There was a paper under a hammer on the worktable that was probably one of her projects before she left. Wood was stacked in the corner, most of it rotted with time. Most was scraps people had given her or she’d take home from the local construction crew that let her work after school and on weekends to earn cash. During the summer, she had worked full time with the guys. They all treated her like their daughter.
Sam closed her eyes and pictured it as it once was. Still a little shack, but it was bigger in her mind’s eye. Her dad taught her how to use a saw, he helped her design and build her first bird house when she was five. He let her help build the gazebo when she was eight years old, and Sam could still remember the sun glinting off his brown hair as she handed him a board. Sam’s mother had made a little tool belt against her wishes because girls didn’t build things. According to Edith, women made the tea for the men to drink when they took a break from work. They didn’t crawl under houses or onto roofs, and they did not have blisters on their hands from swinging a hammer. Edith should have been born in another generation, Sam always thought. Her mother would have thrived in a time when women didn’t work or bring home a paycheck, and she knew it had caused issues in her parents’ marriage that Edith refused to work when times were tough.
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