Layers of Progress

Here to ease Election Day fright

This weekend I bought a dresser off Craigslist. It was what people call “a project piece” in the same way they say the cheapest house on the market “has good bones”. But it was solid wood and didn’t look like it was from Ikea, which was motivation enough to drive across town. I picked up my friend Max on the way since the seller was an older man who mentioned a basement. Better to at least have a witness, I guess. On the way there, I decided this would be a low stakes way to work on my fear of negotiating, so the plan was to try and talk the guy down from $80. Two birds, one stone, etc.  

We got to the house, knocked on the door, and were greeted by Tom from Craigslist, who was dressed in work clothes– knee pads and paint-speckled jeans. He let us in and introduced us to his wife, holding a paint tray and a roller, before walking us through the kitchen to the basement. As we made our way through the historic home, Tom told us the house was his sister’s and they were flipping it since she had recently moved into an assisted living facility. The dresser was one of her abandoned projects. It was mostly sanded, but she never got around to finishing it. Goddamnit Tom, you got me; I’ll pay full price. 

After descending the stairs and nearly shrieking from a very large and very dead spider on the third step, we arrived at the dresser. Tom opened the drawers, which were full of cobwebs and lined with yellowed newspapers. It was honestly in worse shape than I expected– the drawers caught, one would need to be replaced, and the dressertop had some water stains. I took several minutes to look thoroughly at everything, offering up only the occasional “hmm” as Max and Tom waited for my thoughts. I considered passing, but I’d driven all this way and taken up some of Max’s Friday afternoon. What’s the harm in a project piece? It hasn’t been the best year; a sprained ankle prevented me from running the marathon I trained for, I’ve grieved, and I haven’t completed a single new year’s resolution, but you know what Tom? I’ve got $80 and a dream, I’ll take it. 

So Max and I loaded up the dresser and all its little spider coffins into my car and drove away. On Saturday, I borrowed a palm sander from my partner’s brother-in-law, put on my own paint-speckled jeans and spent most of the day sanding and cleaning the dresser up. As someone who spends Monday through Friday sitting in front of a screen, working on a physical project was a dream. I lost myself to the rhythmic passes of the sander and the music that filled my cold garage, taking pleasure in the wood transforming from my work. 

As I was sanding, it became clear to me that Tom’s sister had done a lot of work before the dresser changed hands. I could see faint scratches from where coarse sandpaper was used to remove layers of paint by hand. Some paint remained in places that were less visible and hard to reach. I pictured her tired of sanding, much like me at this point, thinking perfection was not worth the extra effort. I passed the palm sander over those last few spots, finishing what she had started. 

As I sat in my garage, days away from the election now upon us, I thought of my work as a metaphor for progress. It’s never perfect, rarely linear, and can feel incredibly slow. Someone had spent a good amount of time chiseling away with the tools available, grown tired, maybe even a little defeated, and decided to keep going despite imperfections, uncertain if they would see their work come to fruition. The next person to come along carries a different set of tools and renewed energy with which to use them. In a time when many of us are feeling hopeless, it’s worth recognizing that decades of work, countless legislative changes, and years of sanding away the edges of outdated policies have led us to today. Though progress may seem stagnant, or even regressing in some areas, we’re living with freedoms that countless others spent generations fighting to secure.

I haven’t finished staining the dresser yet, but I think I might send Tom a photo of it to share with his sister when I do. If I were her, I’d want to know that someone finished what I started. So she can feel the satisfaction of transforming something in tandem with a stranger. Even though I drove away with a tad bit of buyer’s remorse for the project I had just bought myself, I now realize that it’s a privilege to inherit the task. It’s a gift to brush on the stain and carry forward the work of someone before me whom I’ve never met– to take something faulty and not only restore it, but make it beautiful. Progress, like any good project, is worth the effort.

No links for now, I’m betting we’ve all consumed enough by now. Take care of each other today.