I am pretty sure my father would have secretly loved to have a son. I say secretly because when you have two daughters, you can’t really express a fact like that. “Oh darn. I really wanted a son!” But if he’d had a son, he would have been very happy.

However, my dad always made sure that my sister and I knew how to make simple repairs and improvements around the house. When he embarked on a project, he would often recruit us to “help,” which allowed him to impart wisdom and instructions as well as dos and don’ts of home repair.

When my children left for a recent trip to Florida, I knew this solitary time was my opportunity to re-caulk the tub in their bathroom. There is no denying the fact that I know how to have a good time when my kids are away. Really, the only time the tub is not in use for several hours a day is when they are away, and anyone who has ever caulked [successfully], knows the tub and its various components need to be good and dry before the new caulk is placed.

When I settled in to remove the old caulk, I decided I would do a better job if I could just remove the tub spout to better clean off all of the tiny remnants (or large gobs) of caulk that had made their way under the fixture. But how to remove the fixture? It seemed to twist, but just in case, I consulted YouTube. There, I found a tutorial on how to remove (and replace) an old tub spout. Replace had not occurred to me, but a new tub spout would be just the thing to make the tub shimmer!

I took a trip to the local home improvement store where I found the parts I needed. At the checkout, the cashier looked from my purchase to the old spout that I had brought along just in case I needed a visual example. “That’s a good idea,” she said, pointing to the old spout. “To bring that along.” She paused for a moment, and then she said, “Are you doing this all on your own?” I nodded.

“I wish I was brave enough to take on that kind of project,” she commented. “That’s impressive.”

Not really. I must say, I was trained by a good man to recognize that many projects are not as overwhelming as they might appear. In truth, it’s not a big undertaking to change a tub faucet. The big undertakings I leave to professionals.

Back at home, I finished my project. It was straightforward without any frustrations, and I must say, it looks pretty good. Typically, when I finish a project like this, I would call Dad. “I just changed my tub spout,” I would tell him, and his first response was always the same.

“Did you?” he would respond with a hint of pride in his voice and then we would talk about what I had fixed and how the project had gone.

This time, I can’t call Dad to share my success. But I’m pretty sure he’s smiling with that same hint of pride up in Heaven. Because love… it doesn’t end. It only changes form