A rake down to twenty-two teeth

Last October it caught on a root near the maple, and one tine bent, then snapped, and was swept up with the leaves it had been gathering before anyone noticed it was gone. Twenty two tines remain, evenly spaced but for the one gap, which announces itself only when you look for it, a missing tooth in an otherwise ordinary smile. The rake continues to function. This is worth stating plainly, because a missing tine sounds, described aloud, like a more serious defect than it is. Leaves still gather in the row of collected tines with only a slightly thinner pull where the gap sits, and after four passes across the same section of lawn, the difference is undetectable to anyone but the person doing the raking, who notices it every single time. Replacement rakes cost less than the price of a coffee and a sandwich, and yet this one continues to hang on its hook in the garage, gap and all, through some combination of habit and the mild embarrassment of throwing away a tool that still, mostly, works. It is not sentiment. Sentiment would require someone to have mentioned the rake at all, to anyone, ever, and no one has. It is closer to the ordinary reluctance of correcting a small flaw that has not yet caused a real problem, which describes most of what sits unrepaired in a garage on any given week.

Doreen Fitch