Flower Cart and Sunflower
When I returned to the management office, the Indian man who worked the same day-labor shifts as me stared at me with his big eyes wide open.
As if he desperately wanted to say something.
If he was going to stare like that, would it kill him to at least give a nod of greeting?
And if he had something to say, he could just say it. Standing there weighing his words while looking me over was a little irritating.
I met his gaze with a half-hearted expression of my own, and he simply kept staring as he walked past.
I almost asked him what his problem was, then held my tongue for the baby’s sake.
From behind me came a snickering laugh.
“You finish the jobs so fast I told him to just go home.”
“······.”
I forced down the sigh that tried to rise. I had been taking my time, even going home and coming back, yet apparently that still wasn’t slow enough for these naturally sluggish people.
And that fat white guy clearly found it hilarious that the workers of color—well, on paper I wasn’t an immigrant, but anyway—were fighting over the scraps of work he handed out.
He asked me, as if doing me a favor,
“Anyway, if you do it alone the hours’ll stretch out longer, right? That way you can at least earn a little more diaper money. Am I wrong?”
I handed over the signed work order and pocketed two hours’ worth of wages.
Man, thirty dollars is hard to come by.
Still, if I added about another hour here and worked three hours a day, five days a week, I could make a thousand dollars a month.
With the Indian guy gone, I would at least pick up an extra hour.
While I was thinking that, Tony made an unexpected offer.
“Hey, any chance you can work full-time next week? I’ll give you five hundred.”
I ran the numbers quickly. Full-time meant nine to five, seven hours a day after lunch.
“Thirty-five hours would be five hundred twenty-five, not five hundred.”
“You’re a real stickler, huh. Just don’t run around like you did today and rest for the extra twenty-five bucks’ worth. Take the kid upstairs and change a diaper or something.”
“······.”
I folded my arms for a moment and looked at him.
The fact that five hundred dollars could appear right now was genuinely welcome news.
I had already spent more than planned on the stroller, lumber, tools, and so on.
On top of that, through Manito shopping I could turn five hundred dollars of living expenses into a thousand dollars’ worth of goods.
From the standpoint of someone who needed to build up a household, the more money I spent through the Manito App, the better.
I pictured Tony, his filthy office, and the storage room I had been in and out of all day—trash and supplies jumbled together in chaos—and started negotiating with confidence.
“Count it as forty hours including lunch and give me six hundred. Up front.”
Tony looked at me like I had lost my mind.
He was clearly planning to leave the work to me for a week and disappear somewhere to make a quick score.
The racing magazine in his hand showed a horse wearing a Santa hat, so there must have been some Christmas event going on.
As a twenty-year veteran superintendent, Tony knew that during vacation season the office staff were too busy taking their own time off to pay any attention to the management office, so he was boldly planning to play hooky.
A few part-time hours a day, two or three times a week, he could bill to the office, but disappearing for an entire week meant he would have to pay me out of his own wages without reporting it, so of course he was hesitating.
I kept my face neutral and mixed a little appeal with the words he wanted to hear.
“Next week is the week before Christmas. I want to do something for the baby. During lunch I’ll clean out the storage room and this office completely. You already know there’s nobody better at organizing than me.”
That did the trick.
Tony and the other superintendent, Andy—who hadn’t shown his face all day, probably already fled to some gambling den—were both lazy beyond belief.
They always put off cleaning the storage room until they got word that an inspection was coming from upstairs, then scrambled to tidy up.
“Think of it as money you were going to pay and cleaning you were going to do anyway, just getting it done early. You’ll come back after a nice long rest and find all the deferred work finished and the place spotless. Nothing to worry about.”
Tony tried to hide how tempted he looked and failed completely.
He pretended to deliberate for a moment, then, with an expression that said it still hurt, finally pulled a wad of bills from the drawer.
I headed home with a noticeably fatter wallet and a grin on my face, only to find a package that looked heavy even at a glance waiting by the door.
The lumber had arrived!
I hurried it inside and opened the package with a fluttering heart.
Beautiful walnut wood revealed itself.
“Whoa······.”
I ran my hand along the grain of the glossy wood and the feel was wonderful.
Walnut is dense and moisture-resistant, the kind of wood used for high-end furniture.
Most beginners or hobby woodworkers stick to cheap MDF or plywood for the sake of skill level and cost-effectiveness.
As a complete novice I should have done the same.
But this was furniture for the baby, so I wanted good lumber even if it cost a little more.
The longer I looked at it, the more I liked the soft, warm color of the walnut.
For a larger piece a lighter wood might have been better, but once the child grew I could use it as a storage piece with real interior presence, so I had chosen the slightly deeper tone.
“All right, let’s get started. Please turn out well······.”
The fatigue from several hours of work earlier had already vanished.
Looking at the brand-new tools laid out to one side, an unaccountable confidence began to rise in me.
The company had included assembly instructions for the drawer size I ordered, so the beginning was easy.
I decided to make the drawer first—the centerpiece that would sit between the crib and the wheels.
“Shall we start with the outer box?”
I drove wood screws into the boards that would form the outer drawer box, keeping them perfectly level, then attached the rail pieces to the inner sides so the drawer could slide in and out.
I joined the faces of the inner drawer in order as well, careful that its rails lined up exactly with those of the outer box.
Once I had fashioned the stops—one on the lower rear of the inner drawer and one on the lower front of the outer box—so the drawer would not pull completely free, the basic structure was done.
Looking online, I found all sorts of ways to attach a handle.
I could have chosen the simplest method—just drilling a finger hole in the front—but I finished it classically with an actual handle.
Connecting square boards looked simple, and other people’s blogs showed beginners making all kinds of mistakes at first.
I turned the rather handsome finished drawer this way and that with satisfaction.
After gazing proudly at it for a while I set it carefully aside.
The drawer had been almost like assembling a DIY kit, so the difficulty hadn’t been high, but a good start gave me confidence to move straight on to the next step.
Now it was time to build the bed that would sit on top of the drawer.
First I made and firmly fixed a guard that would completely surround the mattress so the child couldn’t fall out.
The fence-like guard required every single spindle to be fastened to the top and bottom rails and screwed in place; the simple repetitive labor somehow cleared my head.
Maybe people who take up hands-on hobbies get addicted to this almost meditative state of concentration.
After the fence was done I attached a handle so the bed could be pushed like a trolley.
The electric drill that came with the new tool set was a relatively cheap brand, yet it drove the screws without wobbling and held them solidly.
“······Did my skill really improve just because I bought it with points?”
The words slipped out before I could stop them; when perfect symmetry and level lines appeared on all four sides I felt genuinely proud.
Even though it was simple assembly, every step in the sequence flowed more smoothly than I had expected.
Lack of sleep, two hours of labor earlier, and now this work left my lower back aching a little, but it was definitely fun.
Entertaining the silly notion that I might actually have a talent for woodworking, I flipped the finished top and drawer over and attached the wheels.
Connecting the ready-made wheels with the custom-sized rods and fastening them to the bottom of the drawer was truly easy.
The slightly nonstandard design had made the initial planning hard; once the wood arrived cleanly cut and sanded, putting it together was nowhere near as difficult as I had feared.
It felt more like play. Maybe it was because I normally never made anything with my hands, but it was surprisingly enjoyable.
In any case, for a first attempt there was almost no confusion and I finished the assembly in short order.
The baby usually slept three or four hours at a stretch, so I had wanted to finish before he woke if possible; I managed it in exactly three hours.
A stable weight that wasn’t too light, sturdy finishing, wheels that rolled smoothly.
I gave every surface a child’s hands might touch one last careful sanding, applied varnish, and left it to dry for a full day.
The next day.
“Wow, this is way better than I expected.”
The finished crib was far prettier in reality than the sketch or the image I had carried in my head.
It looked so lovely that an armful of flowers would not have seemed out of place.
After confirming the varnish was completely dry, I wiped it once more with a clean dry cloth and put the finishing touch in place—the latex mattress.
Wow, it’s perfect.
I couldn’t help the slightly foolish smile that escaped as I looked at the crib again and again.
“All right, little one. Let’s get you in.”
Finally time to escape the sofa bed, my son!
Before placing Luca in the crib I showed it to him first.
“From now on you’re going to sleep here. What do you think?”
The moment I finished speaking, Luca beamed.
Does my baby already understand everything Daddy says?
Of course not, but the way he smiled as if he knew it was his own bed was so adorable I could hardly stand it.
Laying Luca down in the crib filled me with unexpected emotion. I felt sorry for having made him sleep uncomfortably on the sofa bed for nearly a week.
······Or was it only me who had been folding myself into uncomfortable positions?
Either way, color had finally come into the bare gray space of only a short while ago.
Looking at the deep walnut crib and the golden-haired life inside it, my chest swelled.
Pale soft skin, sky-blue eyes, and thick golden hair—he was like a little summer.
Luca’s birth certificate said he had been born in early winter, yet he was a child who resembled a wide summer sky and a sun just rising.
It was exactly as if a single sunflower were smiling brightly inside a flower cart.