Owen and I worked more on the basketball hoop yesterday. I started in when I got home from the farm, and it was a slow-go, even with directions. Directions called for plastic washers between each pivot and point of friction where bolts threaded to the frame. I searched every box I’d opened, and I did not see them there. Coming inside, I found them covered on the kitchen island where I’d staged parts before the cold front shut us down. After assembling body of the hoop and finding the pieces I thought I lacked, I broke it down and built again.
My assembly and mechanic skills are much like the rest of my life abilities and lessons of experience: trial and error in experience, doing as best I see—discovery—correction and amendment.
This, I did alone as Owen was at his first outdoor baseball practice of the year, sign spring is truly here (or near). Arriving home, he joined me where I was and, for the rest, we worked together.
We raised the pole onto cement and anchored base we’d dug, mixed, and poured together. Raised, secured we checked its level once again—still square front-to-back and left-to right.
By then the sun was down, and sky was nearly dark. We spoke, and in the amazingly understanding and generous patience of his ten-year age, we paused the project there.
We have attachment of the backboard and rim still to go.
“We want to get it right,” I told, and giving reason not to race the dark. “because your kids will be playing on it too just like you at Granny and Papa’s.”
God willing, we will finish today.
I look forward to the years and time and views when it is used—by Owen, his brother and sister, and whatever children and generations to follow after.
It is a window of time. I know not how long it will last nor ways it will change, but I intend to enjoy the moments and sights while they do as from kitchen place, where I write, I see through its frame of view.
