My grandfather told me once, and just once so I'm not sure why it's stuck with me all these years, that some people are born to do physical labor while others are born to supervise. 

"You," he said, "are a supervisor."

I think I was probably 10. He had been mowing, and in joking I told him he missed a spot. I hadn't raised a hand all day except to help my grandmother cook. I did like snapping peas on the back porch.

At the time he was teasing me because I never liked to do things like mowing, weeding, scrubbing, mopping, or anything that got my hands dirty and me sweaty. He lived for that, for being outside and working hard, mowing his 10 acres, twiddling in his wood working shop, hoeing his garden. I didn't even like picking his blueberries, although truth be told it was because I hated the wasps, and he knew that, which is why he'd let me borrow his big leather work gloves because they covered me up to my elbows.

But I think he also recognized in me the ability to rise above the physical labor he'd done all his life. He knew I'd go to college and eventually get an office job, that I wouldn't necessarily need to be able to stand on my feet eight hours, work outside all day, or crawl through a construction site to do wiring, like he did. So it was a good thing that I was good at supervising. 

For a long time I shunned any physical labor, like I really was above it. I never thought I was above him, just the work. Something happened to me around the time he got sick, though, especially after we bought our first house. I hammered a nail (and not just to hang a picture). I planted a bush. I changed a light fixture, painted a wall, weeded my entire yard, planted bulbs, demolished a rotten part of the deck and rebuilt it, put a new brick border around our freshly planted flower beds. Every time I did something new, learned a new skill or accomplished a new task, I thought of him and how proud he'd be of me. Because I learned it all from him in the first place, the value of a hard day's labor and the pride it brings. 

It's those times that I miss him the most. I wish he could see me now, could see the ways in which I am becoming him, the ways that I honor him and the love and kindness he always showed me. I am lucky and grateful to have had him in my life. Surely he's looking down on me from somewhere, smiling, thinking about his little Liz dancing in his garden, now grown into a strong woman, still dancing, in her own beautiful garden.