Some Thoughts On Permanance

When I was so young that my memories are mostly in pictures, my dad was renovating our house to remove a carefully-mitred, plastic-brick-veneer half-wall from our living room.  As he didn't have matching oak flooring at the time, he patched the resulting gap temporarily (and I remember him explicitly classifying it as such) with particle board.  -17 years later in discussion of another small extension of the same floor, my mom stipulates that she wants it done right this time, "Not like over there."  Without hesitation I respond, "But that's just temporary."

Last year while visiting some friends in ME, I assisted them in accepting the dubious gift of a neighbor's broken hot tub.  The brothers and I intended to place it roughly in the intended location in front of the house until such time as it could be hooked up.  -Their mother, realizing the probable permanence of the situation, comes out and insists that we carefully level it and orient it properly.  "But why," we protest, "it's just temporary."

Everything is permanent: I'm just sewing this patch on 'for now', but I'm not going to do it 'for real' until this one breaks (and it still hasn't.)

Everything is temporary: I want to hang this axe 'forever', but when it does fly off the handle, even if it's tomorrow, I can rehang it.