So this weekend, I spent several hours working on Dad's basement. Saturday Mom was there with me and Marv, so we went out to Houlihan's - which has great brunch by the way - and celebrated her birthday. Then back to Dad's house where Mom continued in her quest to sort his thousands of videotapes. We worked on one tool bench, which consisted of emptying and sorting the contents of twenty drawers and the counter top into about fifteen boxes of assorted types of tools: electrical doo-dads, sockets, ratchets and their accessories, screws, washers and other non-nail hardware, painting supplies, compressor-driven tools, and more. After a combined total of about twelve hours, you can almost tell that we did something.

I washed my hands so many times that if one didn't know me, one might think I was prone to compulsive cleanliness. Even my FACE was filthy. But it was interesting. We were sorting hardware - bags upon bags of washers, screws, bolts and the like. I would pick up a little bag that contained about 50 or more of the said items, put the things that had fallen out of the bag back in it and hand it to Marv, who would patch the hole with duct tape. Holding out his hand to receive a bag and the other hand to give me the one he'd just patched, he'd say, "There's MORE?" Every time. Times fifty. But it continued to be funny because of the way he'd say it. Like he was astonished anew at each bag that appeared.

A thousand tiny little pieces of flotsam managed to find their way into boxes. One box of "miscellaneous" turned into two and then four. I had a box of "What the HELL is that?" tools. We moved some of the things that seemed worth cleaning up to sell up into the "selling room," which is a room on the main floor of the house where items that might some day land on eBay start their journey out of the darkness and into the light.

I'd find these random little tools that were just goofy, and somewhere in my mind I'd hear a distant memory speaking to me: "That goes with the torch." or "That's for the compressor." So many tools that I could remember from my teen years spent in the body shop fixing cars. I glowed with pride when Dad would tell me, "Wow! You really have a gift for painting!" And I remember the way that you are supposed to spray paint a car. The long smooth flow left to right with your finger on the trigger, and then the quick release and flick of your wrist that starts you back on your journey to the far left side of the car. The way that the next line of paint will feather onto the previous coat with an exactly perfect overlap. Too much, and you'll sag. Too little and you leave a paintless gap.

It brings up vast oceans of memories to be sorting through this random crap. Memories of working in the garage, of the way he would never throw anything out because everything could be fixed or re-utilized in some way. Not an environmentalist by anyone's standards, my dad truly was one of the first recyclers. He saved things not because he wanted to keep them from going into a landfill, but because you just never knew when you were going to need that seemingly useless thing. And I admit that even as I tossed items that were VERY clearly garbage, I could feel him saying, "HEY! What are you doing with that? It's perfectly good." But I knew in my heart that if *I* could throw it away, it's really garbage. Because I can't throw away anything useful either. Only it actually has to be useful in some real-life way, and not in some imaginary, if only there were pixie dust kind of way.

On Saturday, I looked in the binder that my mom started. She's been going through Dad's spiral bound notebooks and pulling out things that seem meaningful. There's a letter from Dad's dog Max...of course Dad wrote it, but Max signed it. It's written after Max died, apologizing for having to leave Dad. It broke my heart. Then there was another letter to us girls...I wasn't able to read the whole thing. But at the bottom, underlined three times, were the words, "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH."

I skimmed these letters, unable to read them, and started to sob. I walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, followed by Mom and Marv, and Mom hugged me and we cried together. She said, "It's so hard." What else can you say. It's so hard.

Last Thursday after work, Billie and I were walking from Depot Square down about a block to the long-term parking lot where those of us who work the late shift have to park. (The early birds get the close spots.) I don't mind because I don't get much exercise sitting all day on the phones, so it's kind of nice to get just that short walk. We're talking and walking and almost to the cars. We stop to talk a bit - finish our thoughts - and we watch a Ford F150 turn it's wheels and start to slowly back up...into my car. It crunches the back door, and then stops. I hear the passenger - a man - say, "I think you'd better go forward." I hear myself moan just a little as the big truck rolls forward and the rear driver's side door pops back out and releases with a crunching sound.

The subsequent exchange of information and the days of exchanged emails though aren't really the part of the story that relates to my whole state of mind.

On Monday, the driver's insurance company called me at work to ask me where I wanted to bring my car to have the damage repaired. What body shop do I want to use?

It's a seemingly innocuous question except that it started a cascade of emotions and questions. I'd NEVER in my life had to find a body shop. I GREW UP in a body shop. Resler's Body Shop. That's my body shop! Since Dad retired, I'd never had any car that had any body shop needs. When I was in my teens, I got in an accident that would, in another life, have totaled my car. It didn't occur to me to do anything but drive it home, put it in the drive way and pick it up later. Good as new.

When I got divorced and my out-laws insisted that they wanted the van back, Dad got me a free van. It just needed some work. Dad and Kevin fixed it up, put a new paint job on it and it was good to go. No fuss no muss. No wondering about body work, or worry about rust holes. All better.

I always knew that if I needed a body shop, it was right there at home waiting for me. I grew up with the vernacular of a body shop coursing through my literary veins. I could discuss DA's and bondo, fiberglass and wet sanding. I know what orange peel is and what sags are. I understand the process of stripping a car. I know how to get a candied finish.

What I don't know, apparently, is how to answer a simple question, "Where do you want to bring your car?" I was stymied. More than stymied. I was hurt by the question. Finally I just said that I didn't care. The very nice woman - who probably thought i was a lunatic - gave me the name of the nearest body shop - an Abra shop (previously known as "the competition" and "where the losers bring their cars.") She said that she'd contact them and have them call me. I hung up the phone and started to weep. At work. Over choosing a body shop.

Is it wrong that I want to watch them work on my car? And that I will hate them for doing it? And that I will hear Dad in my head also watching them and telling me that I should have gone somewhere else because he knows a guy who could do it for free because that guys owes him a favor?

Maybe I'll strike up a conversation with them and tell them about the sale that we'll be having. Selling lots of body shop things that they could probably use. There are new paint guns, and masks. There are cans of paint, thinner, adhesive...

Eventually we will have everything sorted out in the basement. Boxes of this and that. And it will go to new homes and the name engraved on the handle won't mean a thing. That buzzing engraver that distorted but never completely disguised Dad's handwriting - "RESLER" "RESLER" "RESLER" etched forever into my heart.