Enjoying a Little DIY

Translated…

Awhile ago, as I thumbed across, “A Handyman for a Husband”, I couldn’t help, but smile, because, we are, a family of Do-It-Yourself-ers too.

From me, thirty years ago, my second aunt handed me her barber tool set, since then, I’d taken on grooming my husband, and, my son and my daughter became returning customers too, allowing me, to do my work on their heads, until they are out of high school, saving up a sizeable amount from the trips to the hairstylists’.  For almost ten years, I’d trimmed my own hair too, from the techniques I’d learned stealthily from the barbers’, took care of my hairstyle, dying my hair too, and, it would become eye-opening to my friends.

As a working mom, I’m burning on both ends, the busyness, can’t be imagined.  But, I can spare an hour for hair, more importantly, this made me feel very achieved.  Another sense of my achievement comes from the cooking skills that my mother had passed down to me, whether it be large dishes, or foods for the festivities, or, foods from the small shops, everybody who’d had my cooking would always come back for more.

My husband, he refused to get beaten by the number of skills I have, when the toilet leaked, “daddy’s here!”, the faucets dripped, “dad’ll fix it!”, the drain got clogged, it’s still, “daddy’s here!”, he’s an engineer!  Every time when the New Year rolled around, he’d taken my son, up to the water tower, as I prepared the meals, to clean up the tanks, or, to wipe down the dust in the chandelier in the living room, this had almost become, ritualistic, it’d made our New Year’s Eve meal even more special!

“We don’t call ourselves a family for nothing.”, my third uncle is amazing too, he’d cherished everything he owned, the broken lamp, in his hands, became a masterpiece of art, the old fan that my father-in-law left behind forty years ago, he’d fixed it up, and toned it up, it can still give off the breezes.   Being very handy, he’d also made miniature seesaws, or basketball boards with whatever he could get his hands on, for his grandnephews, which made him the most popular great uncle in all of the grandchildren’s minds.

“Do-It-Yourselves”, not only would it give you a sense of achievement, it’s also an adhesive between people, it’d added a new level of meaning to our existence.  Looking at the people now, everybody is “working with their hands”—sliding on their cell phones, but, other than getting ill, and getting troubled, what good does it bring?  Do you feel fulfilled, from this sort of “moving your hands”?

Start do-it-yourselves, in another way, from the small things around you, while you’re working with your hands, you’re also, working your brains, let’s start on this!

And so, because of the values of the older generations, you FIX what you can, as many times as you possibly can, and, when it can’t be fixed anymore, then, you turn what’s broken into something else, and that, is the way that the older generations were brought up, because they didn’t have that much money to replace the new items, and, that, is the value of saving every penny, that can get passed on to the younger generations.