The Wisdom of Rusty Nails

There’s a quiet from my front porch in Spanish Springs that’s not silent, not with the birds tuning up in the trees and screen doors that creak like they’ve got something to say, but the kind that makes you feel like the wind is eavesdropping.

Sitting on my porch last evening, sipping old coffee out of a chipped mug I’ve had since Reagan was in office, I was thinking about how I don’t want to write about the news much anymore. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that these days, I care more about things like remembering where I left my good screwdriver and whether the neighbor’s boy will ever figure out how to mow in straight lines.

The thought reminded me of one summer when I was maybe ten or eleven and was gifted the supreme responsibility of “watching after things,” while Mom went to the Woodland Villa. I don’t know what things exactly—probably meant the grass, the woodpile, or my brother Adam, who was as accident-prone as he was sure of himself.

Adam had what my mother used to call “big ideas and soft landings.” That day, he got it in his head that he would build a treehouse.

Not in a tree. Of course, not in a tree.

He said the trees were too, “Hollywood.” I thought he meant too tall because what he chose instead was an old sawhorse and a sheet of plywood he found behind the shed.

Now, I knew it was a bad idea. Everyone knew it—the neighborhood scattered as Adam started hammering with the fury of Peter and his haul of fish after Jesus told him where to cast.

But I figured it wasn’t my job to interrupt a boy building his dreams, even if the foundation was two feet off the ground and swayed like Cousin Billy after a wedding punch. He finished it in an hour, climbed on top with a peanut butter sandwich, and yelled, “I LIVE HERE NOW!” just before the plywood cracked in two like the Red Sea parting and dropped him onto his backside.

He got banged up good, nothing broken but his pride, which, to be fair, had a long history of injury. I remember dragging him into the backdoor, both laughing and covered in grass stains.

When Mom returned, she looked at the wreckage, then at us, and said, “Well, boys, at least you used the rusty nails. I was getting tired of those.”

I didn’t know what she meant then, but I think I do now. See, there’s a kind of wisdom in letting people build their crooked dreams, even if they fall apart.

Especially then.

Not every lesson has to come with a lecture. Sometimes, a bruised knee and a chuckle are enough.

And so, in this quieter season of my life, I find myself less drawn to headlines and more to little postage stamp moments of half-memories and half-teachings—stitched together with the rusted nails of time.

The ones that hold me up now, even if the sawhorse sways every once in a while.