IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

It’s the little things. For several years now I have been trying to use our small bedroom as an office of sorts for myself. Inevitably, the room finds other uses. My clothes are in there so it is a closet, and the spare bed is in there so the room is also a guest room. But there is open space and it quickly fills with whatever we need to hide when company comes over for a visit. I finally got a little, $29, build it yourself desk that holds my laptop. After a few twists of the nifty tool the manufacturer gives you and a few more swear words of my own, I had the table ready and put it in the small room. It is the perfect size for the spare bedroom. I was ready to have my early morning time checking emails and playing word games on the internet and figured this would also be a time that I could write without interruptions. But fate rears its ugly head, or in this case, its red head and our son decided to sleep in the spare room. While he can sleep through earthquakes, he somehow manages to wake up when I open the bedroom door. There is no way he would tolerate my being in the room and typing while he was sleeping. The keys would be too loud and “Dad!” and a few other words would start my day. Recently he returned to sleeping in his bedroom and I decided to take advantage of this change in accommodations. I asked my wife and son if either of them had any objections to my rearranging the small room so that I could put my little desk over by the window to take advantage of the natural light. They didn’t object. As I tried to decide how to move things I realized there was more effort involved than I wanted to expend. I decided the desk was just fine where it was and all of the stuff could stay where it was. That afternoon I went off to work at church to set up for the evening Mass. Mass ran longer than usual and there were a few extra duties after Mass so I got home later than I normally do. As I walked in the door my son says, “We were going to have dinner all ready for you when you got home. You got home sooner than we expected.” That was okay. I was just glad to have someone besides me fixing dinner. But I thought to myself, “What? I’m later than usual. They have no idea of what time I get home.” I went from the living room to the small bedroom to change my clothes. The bedroom door was closed because we had a fire in the fireplace and closed bedroom doors make for a warmer living room. I opened the door and was taken by surprise. My little desk was in the corner of the room by the window, the bed had been moved, the floor lamp was strategically placed by the desk, the storage items had migrated to the attic and I was in awe. I could not have come up with a better arrangement of the furniture and the decorations than my wife and son had. A couple of pictures were put up, one painted by a dear friend who has gone home to God. My Oregon Duck hats were hanging by my desk; my Rose Bowl hat, a regular Duck hat with an O on it and my worn out, sweat stained yellow, screaming Donald Duck hat. The Donald Duck hat is my favorite. I sat down in my desk chair and was feeling quite comfortable in my new office set up. But the icing on the cake, so to speak, is something special. On the other wall above my desk hangs the blade of a canoe paddle. My son, an Eagle Scout, told his mom that I needed to have the paddle blade on my wall. “Makes it more like an office and it’s the one thing Dad got for being Scoutmaster.” I was the Scoutmaster for my son’s troop and in my second year we went to summer camp at Camp Parsons in the Olympic Peninsula, on the shores of the Hood Canal. On the Friday of the week at camp they run a big athletic contest with relay races and other activities. The final event is The Octopus Race. It is just a canoe race but you have four people in the canoe, thus the eight arms of the octopus. We had never been to Parsons so we did not know what the race was all about but we did have our four strongest Scouts ready to go. Prior to the race, while the Scouts were getting their paddles and life vests, I was talking with another Scouter. I told him we hadn’t seen this race before. He told me the secret was to not get into the middle of the canoes at the starting gun. “Go to the outside, otherwise it is a traffic jam.” I thanked him for his advice and immediately found our Senior Patrol Leader to tell him. Sure enough, when the race started, the traffic jam appeared. Our Scouts went to the outside and were one of five canoes that were free of the traffic jam. The race is about a mile in length and by the halfway point there were only two canoes still in contention for first place. As they made the turn, our canoe was in the lead. The rest of us from the troop were watching from the pier. My Scouts started chanting our troop number, “69! 69! 69!” getting louder and louder as our canoe got closer to the finish line. We won! The prize for winning The Octopus Race is the blade of a canoe paddle, hand painted by one of the camp staff. It has our troop number on it, a picture of the bay and Octopus Island, the halfway point of the race, and the words Octopus Cup, Week 4 2003, Camp Parsons. It is an award you won’t find in any trophy shop. I look up at the paddle blade from my chair and think of my Scouts, all of whom are in their twenties now. Ten years have passed but I still remember that race. My son was wrong about the paddle being the only thing I got from being Scoutmaster. I got an Eagle Scout son, a bunch of adopted sons and wonderful memories of their struggles and successes as they journeyed into adulthood. The paddle blade contains them all. But my son was right, the paddle blade does make my little corner of our spare bedroom more like an office. So here I sit, typing away in the early morning and so very thankful that my wife and son spent over three hours fixing up the room. It is just a little thing in the larger span of time but it is an incredibly big thing for me. I am relishing my new office. It doesn’t have a high back leather chair, a rosewood hand carved desk with matching bookshelves or even a Tiffany desk lamp. What it does have is a whole lot of love and I am thoroughly enjoying it.