The Hook I Forged

My daughter gave me a blacksmithing class for my sixtieth birthday. "You're always saying you want to make something real," she said. She came with me.

The forge was in an old barn outside town. The blacksmith, a soft-spoken woman with forearms like a sailor's, showed us how to heat a steel rod in the coals until it glowed orange, then hammer it on the anvil. The sound rang through the whole barn.

My first attempts were terrible. I bent things in the wrong direction. I hit my thumb. My daughter, on the other hand, was a natural. She made a perfect curl on her first try.

By the end of the day, we each had made a simple iron hook. Mine is a little crooked. Hers is beautiful. We hung them side by side next to my front door. Every time I hang up my coat, I remember the heat, the ringing anvil and my daughter laughing at me with soot on her face.