What We Build From

My dad taught me to drive a stick shift when I was eight.

Not in a "responsible parent" kind of way — in a "we're in a cow pasture and I don’t feel like getting out to open gates anymore" kind of way.

No seatbelt. No instruction manual.
Just:

“Hit the clutch, don’t hit the cows, and if you do… well, we needed beef anyway.”

By ten, I could chop wood, shoe a horse, clean a fish, and hold my own in a feed store argument about fencing staples.
By twelve, I was selling friendship bracelets out of a Caboodle at the local farmers market.
Because nothing says “Midwest childhood” like livestock trauma and early-stage capitalism.

What he gave me wasn’t softness.
It was survival.
Resourcefulness.
The ability to figure things out with what I had on hand — be it a bungee cord, a paperclip, or an emotional support glitter pen.

But what he didn’t mean to teach me was what to do when the version of me I became didn’t fit neatly back into the blueprint I was handed.

That part?
I had to build myself.

There’s a particular kind of grief that comes when the person you’re becoming doesn’t quite belong in the place you came from.
When you carry the lessons, but not the language.
When you still love someone and yet your truth feels like a quiet betrayal.

Even now, I hear his voice in my head when I’m doing something weird with tools:

“That’s not how you hold a hammer.”
“Who taught you that knot?”
“Well hell, it’s not wrong... but it’s not right either.”

And still — I build.

Because underneath the disagreements, the distance, the things left unsaid…
Is a foundation I can’t unlearn.
Calloused hands that showed me how to keep going when it’s hard.
How to make something out of not much.
How to hold my own.

There’s a photo of us I keep close — baby me, arms raised like I already knew I was meant for something big. Him holding me up before either of us knew how complicated that would become.

And I like to believe…
Some part of him is still lifting me now.

Even if we don’t speak the same language anymore.
Even if I’ve built a life he doesn’t fully understand.
Even if the store I’m creating would make him squint and go, “Didn’t expect this… but damn, kid.”

The truth is:
I’m still his kid.
Just with different tools.
Different dreams.
Same grit.

If you’ve ever carried that kind of complicated love — the kind that shaped you and stretched you — you’re not alone.

And if you’re building something from it?

I hope you know:
That foundation is enough.
And what you’re building now?
It matters.