Hammer

Looking back, one of my first memories is whacking wooden nails with a plastic hammer in pre school. I remember sitting on the linoleum floor and the wooden cabinets that we stored our toys into that were filled with blocks and square boxes with slots where you could bang wooden nails into a hole. I really enjoyed it. A few years later when I was 5 or 6 we moved into a new house at the top of a hill on Calle La Montana. My grandpa, otherwise known as Poppops, let me work alongside him when I came home from school, building little boxes out of discarded wood and banging nails wherever I could. I wasn't allowed to go in the workshop in the garage if he wasn't in there with me but one time i snuck into there and smashed my finger while I was banging my little hammer and I had to hide my blood blister from my mom for a few days so she wouldn't ask me what i did to my thumb.

The satisfying feeling of smashing a nail into wood cleanly and efficiently is not to be compared. If you asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up I probably would have said a carpenter, like my grandpa. Poppops was a master carpenter and I loved watching him do anything with his hands. They were the hands of a strong and capable person. His nails were always neatly trimmed and his skin a burnished brown, his hands smooth and large. He moved with purpose and intention. I think about watching him work and I know that's why I wanted to be a carpenter too. In middle school, I was one of two girls in the industrial arts program. We built a spice rack and I remember napkin rings that I made from bright yellow lucite. One of my last summers in college, I spent in Telluride helping my friend Pete build a house. I helped with the foundation and learned some more skills. Once I moved to Oahu and started some jewelry classes at the Academy of Arts I was using a hammer on silver and gold and learning about forging metals. Interestingly, banging repeatedly on metal hardens it. I have been taking classes at the Silvera Jewelry School in Berkeley, California so that I can make some designs that require working on a bench.