Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

By Maggie Smith

Mary sometimes complains that people give her things that are too valuable. I explain to her that it’s because people know that she has the x-ray vision that can see good bones in things. They want to give her things because they know she will clean and fix and assemble them with other things with good bones and that around her, corners of the world become more beautiful. I’ve seen it. Truckloads of boiled wool sweaters, many handmade or from LL Bean and Eddie Bauer. Hand-carved antique wardrobes. Cast iron English “lawn living room”. Carved chairs and brand new chesterfield sofas. Jewelry. Mary has a rule. Remove stagnation and give things away. I’ve never known her to try to sell the things she's made or restored. Forlorn objects and moth-eaten materials come to her hand, are made beautiful again -- or into something entirely different -- and then either find a place in our home or are spirited into someone else’s life.

Last week, we were trying to find a junker of a table for the “old kitchen” that wouldn’t look too modern, that we could roll out pie crusts on, attach a hand mill for grinding grain, and knead the sourdough and shape the boules to go into the beehive oven just beyond, nestled into the center chimney.

$150 in Dover NH, but we didn’t have a truck that day. The young couple needed the Christmas cash and were in a hurry to beat incoming snow, so she drove it up to us. It was perfect, because I had promised Mary she’d have a table for Christmas. It was beat up, but, undeniably, it had lovely bones. So on Christmas Day, while I was cleaning up the old parlor on the other side of the center chimney – having pulled down 250 year old oak lath – she worked her magic on the old oak boards of the tired table, using techniques that professional furniture historians, restorers, and museologists should not read further about. Her goal was just to smooth out any splinters, even up color, and make the wood glow again. By the time I had finished clearing out the debris and vacuuming the unbelievable amount of dirt that came down from above the plaster, along with 250 years of mouse droppings, it was very clear that the table was handmade. We could see the divots from the hand-held plane and heavy triple slanted pegs holding the stretcher to the legs. Try as she may to find a serviceable piece of junk, she had failed. She is already reading up on how to make a traditional linseed oil, iron oxide, and canvas oilcloth to protect it while we go about our 18^th century activities. I wouldn’t be surprised if the oilcloths themselves end up being a bit of a masterpiece. I’ve seen her hammering massive grommets into the canvas signs we used at the Farmers Markets these last 3 years.

As for her abject failure to acquire a few beat up objects that we can just use with abandon, I told her, “it is your lot in life to acquire shithouses filled with mouse droppings and forgotten objects and to make them beautiful. To help others do the same thing in their own lives. Because, after all, the world has beautiful bones.”