The house where I was raised was an ideal place for our family, except for one serious flaw: the house did not have my parents’ fingerprints on it. So began a constant construction project that lasted almost a decade. Bathrooms were moved and walls knocked down; skylights were installed, had their leaks fixed, then uninstalled for the trouble they caused. My parents removed the attic, raised the ceilings, bought a larger Christmas tree to take advantage of the new vertical clearance, then celebrated the New Year by re-tiling the bathrooms.

One day after arriving home from school, I saw my father hovering over a giant stockpot with wooden strips fanned out over the rim like uncooked spaghetti. He was boiling the planks, he said, to soften them. He’d then slowly form each strip along the curved edge of our built-in bookshelf to use as trim for the semi-circular shelves at the end. My father was taught this method by my grandfather, another amateur furniture maker, and now it was my turn to learn the process. “Pay attention to the wood, follow the grain, and if you take care, the wood will bend and not break,” he said. This was clearly intended to be a life lesson as well as a lecture in woodworking, the kind of practical inheritance that fathers like to provide their sons. Be patient. Be gentle. Got it.