The Persistence of McGyver

This fire pit sits on our deck.  We bought it six years ago, once we retired. It's been granted new life more than once.  Kind of like me.  My McGyver-like husband first reconfigured the fireplace from wood burning to propane. No small task, switching out the main fuel source.  Kind of like I have done, once being fueled by work and now by freedom.  Pandemic, death, illness, impending war notwithstanding which is a funny word because sometimes it feels like all that chaos is standing right with and on top of my chest making it hard to breath.  Over time the tile surround of this outdoor fireplace chipped and cracked.  It's hot then freezing cold in Maine.  The old tile just gave up.  A victim of the mood swings of it's weathered life.  Like my left hip that hurts, a relative who came out as n alcoholic and one who is now identifying as nonbinary.  Although none of us are giving up.  We planned to replace the old material which had nearly gone to dust with high-end wood-looking ceramic tile.  "Shouldn't we just buy a new fireplace?  Maybe they have a sale at Lowes?"  I appealed to my husband who had just bought a special saw to cut the tiles he was determined to use. Raggedy edges rendered the porcelain fake wood planks useless.  "You need a special saw and water," our friend sympathized with the broken porcelain.  Taking what presents, not fighting it.  Moving onto the next.  I struggle and yet I push myself to let life play out.  Broken porcelain in a pile, we reimagined using wood because my husband had several boards in the garage.  Living present and real despite heart palpitations when I scroll through CNN, FoxNews, Facebook.  I told my ceramics teacher recently, "I just try new shit."  She was upset that after she demonstrated how to construct a garlic roaster I was the only one who jumped in.  "What will friends say?"  My husband chuckled thinking about the wood catching fire and the whole thing bursting into flames.  He loves making people do a double take.  And I love him for that.  "Maybe we should buy a new one?"  I asked my husband a little louder this time.  He winked at me and directed me to a forty-year old can of wood stain in the basement, way up over there in the back on a shelf.  "I've had that stain since college, believe it or not."  I wanted to tell him he was a damn hoarder but then so am I.  Wood protected and golden brown, we glued and clamped the planks into little trays around the center, snuggled in.  And then it rained nonstop for two days.  After the deluge, all four ends of the wood curled up like a Cheshire Cat smiling at us, "Nice try!"  Stops and starts. "Keep going," a therapist said to me once when there seemed no reason to want to take the next breath.  My friend Mary Ann, announced over cocktails around the loopy looking fire pit,  "Just bolt the wood down. That'll do it." And so my husband who I love for his perseverance and creativity and ability to take suggestion, bought a bag of bolts.  He painted them black.  I painted the base of the old fireplace the color of a moonless night.  We reinvented this Home Depot fire pit into a one-of-a-kind industrial-looking bomb fire place.  Bolted, glued, stained.  Flexible in the designing.   Potentially flammable.   Kind of like me these days.