Objects in the Rear View Mirror...

When I took the plunge and began writing full time, I closed a medical modification business I had owned for over ten years. I installed grab bars and ramps, but my main product was a transfer pole of my own design. Without getting into specifics, transfer poles are grab bars that can anywhere in a room. I closed the business and haven't looked back. But I did have a few poles left in the shop. So when a patient's daughter called me yesterday and asked for a pair of them to be installed in an assisted living facility that I had a good relationship with, I agreed and made the appointment for today. After all, those two poles represented $300 that I could put toward the burnt orange Elio I have reserved.
This morning I turned the power on in the shop for the first time in over six months. As I cut and machined the parts to make the top brackets, my muscle and mental memory kicked in thanks to the smell of hot steel filings and took me back to those days. It was like seeing an old friend. I remembered the elderly woman who answered the door completely nude, much to her daughter's horror. I remembered the WWII vet who showed me a picture of himself receiving a medal from General Eisenhower. Another vet who gave me his WWI trench knife to thank me for my work. There was a Russian woman who runs a board and care that insisted I put a pole in every one of her rooms. There were also memories of jerks. The guy who told me, "A person of your station in life should know better than to suggest someone of my station might use plywood in their home." A woman who kicked me out of her house because I felt sympathy for Trayvon Martin's family. There was even a lady who tried to blame me for water damage caused by a grab bar I didn't install.
But the job I did today went smoothly. I showed up and the building had a work order waiting for me. The patient's family was there to write the check. The install was easy. In fact, it was almost textbook perfect. The bed was already in an ideal spot, the joists were perfectly aligned with the toilet in the bathroom, and I was out of the building in less than half an hour. If every job went that smoothly, I would still be doing that work in addition to writing.
I walked out of the building and put my tools back in the truck. I texted my wife that it felt oddly nostalgic to revisit that time, if only for one job. I pulled onto J Street and headed for the Cap City Freeway. By the time I was merging onto I-80, I was thinking about a conversation Cort is going to have with a family member in book five. Like the cars in my mirror as I glided into traffic, that world is behind me now and somewhere beyond the mountain ridges in front of me, is a future of my own creation.