Children remember

This poem was sent to me by my all grown-up aspiring to be a writer
daughter. Hope you enjoy it....I did.

I jam the doorway of my father's 1500 sq. ft. shop he built.
It's bigger than my apartment in the city.
It has it's own air conditioner.

He spends hours in there,
curved over his workbench,
fiddling with parts and pieces,
working power tools like toys.

My eyes tumble over his crusty knuckles, his coriaceous hands,
his "I still got five fingers" hands,
his "do-it-yourself" hands,
his "I grew-up-on-a-ranch hands.

Hands that make quick work of sheet metal
the way a baker knowingly shapes dough into pretzels.
methodically tracing, bending,
melding scraggy bits into
something tasteful.

He steps to the blueprint with a magnifier,
following the line with one tan finger
while turning the piece of metal
he made with the other,
comparing.

"Aren't you afraid of making a mistake?" I ask.

His deep, earthy eyes rise from concentration and
fall on me, daughter spying from the doorway.
He sighs at the question, shakes his head,
gets that half-grin twisted up in his mouth until a smile breaks
loose.

"I guess we'll find out if I do!" he jokes.

Joke that isn't funny. It won't be the first time I've had to watch
my father hop in a cockpit of a plane he pieced together
with epoxy and liquid metal and taxi the runway and
take off and transform into a tiny bird while we hold our breath
wondering whether or not he will ever come down from that cloudy
perch,
whether or not we will be fledglings left in the next with mouths wide
open,
whether or not we will have to hear, or rather - not hear,
the sound of the prop faltering or the engine sputtering
or the bird exploding in the sky like a puff of
God's cigar smoke.

He interrupts:
"I could hire a test pilot for the first flight, but if I made even
one mistake..."
trailing off his eyes go far away, contemplating the outcome
of one missed bolt, one loose connection.
"well...I just wouldn't be able to live with myself."

I am at once terrified and humbled by this daredevil Dad,
this person who built a 1500 sq. ft. shop
so he could construct this plane,
so he could hang in the sky dangleing in front of his maker,
so he could dangle in front of us all
and make us wonder
if we'll ever see him again.