Can I Fix Your Stairs?

Back in the 90s I knew a woman who lived in a medium-sized town here in Ontario. Her father had come over from Poland after the war and built up a small contracting business while raising three kids. He was a heavy smoker, and one day the doctor gave him the news: there’s a shadow on your X-ray, all we can do now is buy you some time.

A couple of weeks later my friend came home from work to find her father and his pickup truck gone. He returned a few hours later, and when she asked where he’d been, he said, “Just taking care of things.” It happened again, and then again, and finally she demanded to know where he was going.

Long story short, Meto was going back to houses he’d built—sometimes twenty years ago—and knocking on the door and saying, “Excuse me, I apologize that I intrude, but please, can I fix your stairs?” Some people thought it was a scam and shut the door in his face, but after forty-odd years he was pretty well known around town, so yeah, sometimes people would let him in to fix a flight of stairs he had never been satisfied with, or to re-hang a door or straighten a window sash.

I don’t know how many things he got to make right before he was too weak to go out on his own any more. I hope it was enough for him to feel that he’d done as much as he could.

Time to make another cup of tea. If you came in peace, be welcome.