The well built woman

They say a poor workman blames his tools. I blame myself. How often have I solicited the help of a man to do things I claimed I couldn’t do? More than I care to admit. The truth is, I was just too lazy to try to figure it out or in some cases I actually convinced myself that I lacked the necessary chromosome and was incapable of accomplishing any task that required visiting a hardware store.

In the mid eighties, I was in the process of divorcing my husband of ten years and decided it was time for a change. I moved to the Virgin Islands, solo. What I quickly learned was that even if one (woman) was willing to hire help to do the things I had always avoided doing on my own, it just wasn’t possible. In the process of “fixing up” my first island apartment, I gathered up all my courage and went to the one and only hardware to store to inquire about getting an item repaired. They told me that they didn’t do that and when I asked if there was somewhere else I could go or if they knew someone who could help me, they replied, “Yes, it’s called a husband”.

Having recently rid myself of the only one I had, who by the way wasn’t all that handy, I was determined to become competent. I had no delusions about becoming a contractor. I just wanted to put up a shelf, hang a hammock, or install a new shower head.

When my Mother called from New York and asked me what I wanted her to send me for Christmas, I think she almost died of shock when I requested a black and decker power drill. I laugh about it now, but at the time it seemed like the least likely object that I would ever possess. Nonetheless, when the drill arrived, it took me a week to work up the courage to open the box, several days before I had the guts to read the directions and then another span of time before I actually made my first hole in the wall!

It seems like such a simple thing now, but I still remember the sense of satisfaction I experienced after hanging the pile of pictures that had rested on the floor against the wall for months. I get teary eyed thinking about how proud I was to install a towel bar in the bathroom and don’t even get me started about the day I finally grabbed my latest issue of Vogue and climbed confidently into the hammock I had secured safely to my living room beams.

This article is written by Angel Williams. We get the right from Constant-Content.com to publish this article. Republishing it is not allowed.