And if my family had a problem with that, well, they’d have to actually notice me first.
The next few months were the loneliest and most productive of my life.
I threw myself into my work like a man possessed.
Not because I was running from something, although I probably was, but because for the first time, I was building something entirely for myself without looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching.
My online store had been doing okay before.
A few orders a month, some custom commissions, mostly chess sets and decorative pieces, but I’d always held back.
I priced things too low because I didn’t think people would actually pay what they were worth.
I turned down opportunities because they seemed too big or too risky.
I played small because that’s what I’d been trained to do.
Michael doesn’t take up space.
Michael is the quiet one.
Michael sits at the table and eats his mashed potatoes.
Not anymore.
I redesigned my website.
I invested in better photography for my pieces.
I raised my prices.
And I’ll be honest, I held my breath the first time I listed a chess set for $1,200.
But it sold in three days.
Then I made another one and listed it for $1,500.
Sold in a week.
I started getting inquiries from collectors, interior designers, even a guy who ran a high-end gift shop in Nashville.
He wanted to carry my work on consignment.
I said yes.
By month two, I was making more money from carving than I’d ever made at any job.
Not life-changing money yet, but real money.
Enough to quit the hardware store.
Enough to feel like maybe this thing I’d been told was a silly hobby was actually something special.
Imagine that.
The thing my dad dismissed as sandpaper and sawdust was turning into a legitimate business.
I also started going to the cabin on weekends.
Not officially.
My mom hadn’t sold it yet. She and Aunt Dela were still going back and forth about whether to list it or rent it out, so it just sat there empty.
I’d drive out on Saturday mornings, let myself in with the key Grandpa had given me years ago, and work at his bench.
There was something about being in that space that centered me.
The smell of the wood, the light coming through the window over the bench, the sound of nothing but birds and my own hands working.
It felt like Grandpa was still there, standing behind me, saying, “Slow down, Michael. Let the wood tell you what it wants to be.”
During one of those weekends, I met Elise.
She lived about a mile down the road from the cabin in a small house with a garden that looked like something out of a magazine.
I’d driven past it a hundred times as a kid, but never paid attention.
Elise was out front when I drove by, struggling with a fence post that had come loose in a storm.
I stopped to help because that’s what you do on a country road.
You don’t just wave and keep going.
She was 30, a veterinarian who worked at a large animal practice about 20 minutes away.
Dark hair, kind eyes, and this way of talking that was direct but never harsh.
She thanked me for the fence post, offered me a glass of iced tea, and we ended up sitting on her porch talking for two hours.
I told her about the carving.
She told me about a horse she’d saved the week before that everyone else had written off.
We didn’t talk about my family.
We didn’t talk about trash cans or chess sets or invisible sons.
We just talked.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt like someone was actually listening.
We started seeing each other regularly after that.
Nothing dramatic, no grand romantic gestures, just dinners, walks, long conversations.
She came to the cabin one day and watched me work.
She didn’t say anything for about 20 minutes.
Just sat there observing.
Then she said, “You disappear when you carve, like you go somewhere else. It’s beautiful to watch.”
Nobody had ever said anything like that to me.
Nobody had ever looked at what I did and called it beautiful.
I had to excuse myself to the bathroom for a minute after that one.