As promised, I'm beginning my blog with an older project, but one that has some significance for me. It was one of the first involved projects that I took on without any mentoring from my father, from who I learned almost everything I know about woodworking. It was also significant in the message it delivered to my wife. This first post is a bit long and probably has more personal information than future projects, but it's one of the more meaningful projects I've built. The back story necessarily comes with it. With the exception of some older projects that I didn't fully document, future posts will lean more toward actual woodworking.
My wife and I married in 2001 after a several year engagement. Since we first met, she's always told me how much she wanted children. On the other hand, I can't say I ever had that desire. As long as I can remember I've had a strong case of wanderlust. Going back to my early career ambitions of being a National Geographic Photographer, I had long envisioned a life of traveling the world and seeing and absorbing as much of the world as possible until it was no longer foreign to me. For me, that also meant a life of relative solitude; I didn't want to leave a family behind every time I set out to explore a new place.
Obviously the National Geographic thing never materialized (though I still maintain a love for the magazine), and I did end up settling down at the start of the millennium. Although I had decided to settle down, having children was still something of a foreign concept to me. I never really knew how to deal with children. I can think on their level and in many ways I'm still a child at heart, as evidenced by my growing collection of LEGO. But thinking like a child and interacting with a child are two very different things.
Which brings me to sometime in mid-2005. Recall that my wife has always wanted children. I knew that we eventually would travel that path, but I set out a few clear goals at the beginning of our marriage:
- We had to live somewhere other than Lubbock, Texas.
- We both had to be gainfully employed in a job with a career path.
- We had to be established in a permanent residence - preferably a house.
- The residence had to be in a decent neighborhood within a good school district..
- I had to be ready.
By 2005 the first four goals had been met. We met at Texas Tech and married in Lubbock, but for various reasons I knew Lubbock was not in my long-term plans. I also believed that if we had a child it would be that much harder to move away. We moved from Lubbock to Houston, we both found employment at NASA and had begun forging careers. We bought our first house in a good neighborhood close to a school.
The first four goals were met; the fifth was a bit more difficult to pin down. Everyone always asked us, "When are you having kids?" By the way, this is a terrible question and you should never ask this of any couple. You just never know what they might be dealing with in their private lives. I know the tired line - "you're never really ready for children." There is some truth to that. However, I believe there is a difference between knowing if you're ready for children, and knowing that you're not ready for children. I was in the latter category.
After a few years enjoying life as a newly married couple, and all of the freedom that comes with being young and able, I started thinking about the question. Am I ready? I was. Rather than just sit to dinner one night and just tell my wife, "Oh, by the way, I want kids now," I thought it would be fun to show her in a more meaningful way. I hatched my plan. I wanted to build a rocking horse and give it to her for Christmas.
I knew in my head what I wanted, but finding a good design proved more difficult. After a bit of research, I finally found the Playroom Palomino Rocking Horse. It matched my vision of how a classic rocking horse should look. I bought the plans, gathered the wood, and started building. In the past I employed my father's help for many of my projects. I appreciated his patience and willingness to teach me, and it gave us rare bonding time that we never really had while I was a child. Because of the significance of the rocking horse, and the message it gave to my wife, I wanted to try to build it on my own. The construction is pretty straightforward, and it didn't call for any skills or techniques that I didn't already know. I successfully built the horse and presented it to my wife for Christmas 2005. She was thrilled, and she got the message straight away.
The plans call for cherry and mahogany woods, but being relatively new and inexperienced I was afraid of such 'exotic' woods. (In hindsight, that was rather silly). I used poplar for the entire horse. I stained the body a red mahogany color and used a natural stain for the rockers, handle, saddle, mane, and tail. I used a bit of craft paint for the eye. I used a suede strip and some standard eyelets and metal rings for the reins.
I'm satisfied with how well it turned out, and I'm happy to report that our daughter enjoyed riding it until she outgrew it. It still stands proudly in the room, waiting for future children to play in so many years. Thanks for reading.
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