I Could Do This

2024-07-09 “I Could Do This” by Merritt

I’ve been in Miami less than a day, but Ailana Geven @ailana.geven saw to it that her passion for helping others was not overlooked. 

“So you’re an engineer?” One of the carpenters working at the site asked me.

“I have a degree,” I replied. “I suppose I will be, one day.”

“Well, you drive a nail very nicely,” the carpenter said.

I smiled. “I’ve always liked building things. Tree houses… forts… as a kid. I helped my dad build an extension on the garage.”

I realized that was in 1979, but I figured I wouldn’t have to show pictures. 

“Okay, so,” the carpenter said, “you’ll understand what we need to do, here. This is a load-bearing wall, and we need to put in a door here, and remove it from there.”

He was pointing, and I understood.

He went on. “I want to put in some temporary bracing while we take out the studs and build up the header for the new door.”

“Makes sense,” I replied.

He pointed at some salvaged 2X4s. “Grab some of those and let’s get started.”

I smiled. This is good work. It’s not mindless, and it means something to the people on the far end of the rehab. This is work I could put myself into whole-heartedly.

That job in New York looms over my head. I skipped over 40 years of technology changes. Sure, angles are still angles. The math is the same. But the materials… I laughed at my thought before I finished it: Google…

Emma was in another room scraping away some make-shift foam someone had put on the walls as insulation. She had spent the whole night working on the language app Ailana told her about. She saw me picking up the 2X4s and smiled. 

Jenn is all over the place. The site coordinator has her doing about 10 things at once, and she seems pretty good at it.

I’m not saying I want to spend my whole time in Miami doing this, but I am saying this isn’t the last project like this that I want to be part of.