"Mr. Xu! My chair is missing a leg, can you fix it for me!" In the early morning he heard the loud wailing of Mr. Wang next door. "No problem, I’m coming." My grandfather was a well-known carpenter in the village, and the pieces made from his hands were always alive and lifelike. Neighbors often came to him to customize and repair items: neighbor's children got married and held banquets, missing a few tables, Grandpa built them without saying a word, and dozens of plates were placed on the tables without collapsing. Auntie Huang's small child's wooden train broke down, he efficiently made the clockwork and gears work again, and the child was happy. Even the coffin boards of Mr. Li who lived across the river were made by him! The furniture he made was exported from the village to the county, feeding our family and even boosting the economy of the entire village, so that Grandpa received the respect and love of all in the village.

Usually accompanied by my grandfather, is an inking pot- a large wooden board more than 20 centimeters long. There is a round wire wheel under it, which is entangled in a black line, usually, this black line on the other side of the board is stuck in the ink tank. The end of the ink line has a line cone, when the line is straightened, the line cone to the ink line fixed, only to see grandpa straighten the line upward, and then let go -- a straight line of ink is like magic appearing on the wood. Grandpa told me that this line helps him to make sure that the horizontal and vertical are straight so that he can cut carve assemble and trim. This is Grandpa's treasure. High-intensity, long hours of work and delicate carving require a high level of vision, and Grandpa often wears glasses as thick as two beer bottle caps stacked on top of each other. He holds the glasses, which are about to slip off the bridge of his nose, and squints his eyes into a slit, while he puts the tip of his nose against the board that is about to become a work of art, and carefully sketches out the outlines of the pattern. He examined the piece of wood from different angles, his head shifting back and forth at all three hundred and sixty degrees, holding up a small carving knife and gesticulating as he looked at it, deciding where he should start. He could always pick out exactly where the carving was rough and needed to be sanded, and where it was a few millimeters thicker and needed to be sharpened. When I was a child, I used to carry a small bench and sit next to my grandfather, staring at him and learning some simple techniques. His eyes were concentrating, his mouth's breathing was weak but regular, his hands held the knife handle steadily without a little tremor, he was hunched over, his body leaned forward with concentration when he finished work, he breathed out, the heavy stone in his heart fell, and only then had time to pay attention to me, he looked at me and asked me, "Xinyan, you look so serious, do you also want to be a great carpenter when you’re older?"

About ten years ago, Grandpa began to use his sawing calloused fingers from time to time, grabbed a small side of the shirt and began to wipe glasses, the frequency is much more than before, and I asked him why. He told me that he always felt that there was a layer of haze when he looked at things, like the feeling that the glasses could not be wiped clean, and this feeling would appear from time to time, and after wiping the glasses, the haze would disappear. At that time, we thought it was just a problem with his glasses, so we didn't care. The days went on as normal, and Grandpa went about his day-to-day work as well. To make life better for his family, he often took on some very delicate customization. He measured and sketched with his inking pot every day, and used his parcel of various tools for sketching and carving, and his eyes, which should have been resting properly, were used more and more instead. After about half a year, his eyesight had digressed and did not seem to get any better. It was then that we went to the country hospital to do a checkup, and he was diagnosed with a cataract. In future projects, he would frown from time to time, holding the glasses to watch his unfinished crafts. When he was about to touch the wood, his right hand holding the carving knife stopped in the air because he could not see and confirm the details on the wood. I remember that he was originally able to do a whole day's work without a break, but had to take a break for eye discomfort after working for more than an hour from then on. One time, Auntie Yang, one of Grandpa's old clients, customized a chair with a dragon head, which was a very difficult piece of work. Originally, the work could be completed in two weeks for my grandfather, but this time it was delayed to four weeks before delivery. But when Auntie Yang got the work, the original expectation of the face instantly lost her smile - my grandfather carved the dragon head very roughly, the dragon scales were very unclear, and even the chair had a lot of rough, not yet worn clean wood chips, which is far from the quality of the previous. There was also a time when Uncle Xu customized a large round table, the table's four legs were of different lengths resulting in the table's surface tilting at a great angle, making it impossible to use. All of these problems did not occur before Grandpa's eyesight problems. Moving forward, fewer and fewer villagers came to Grandpa to have their items made, and Grandpa realized that due to his cataract, people slowly began to alienate him by no longer trusting his abilities.

Since then, all he did every day, besides eating and sleeping, was to sit in front of his workbench and stare out of the window. He used to hold his inking pot and the woodwork he used to make in his arms, but now he wouldn’t do anything. He would sit like this for a whole day, and he would speak fewer and fewer. Although he was still very kind and smiling at my mom and I every day, I could sense the loss and frustration in his heart. Grandpa was the backbone of the family, and since he couldn't work as much as he used to, the family's financial condition had gone downhill. Carpentry was not only his responsibility to support the family, but it was also a love that he clung to for the rest of his life.

We were all concerned about Grandpa. Mom, as Grandpa's daughter, often took time out on weekends after working in the city to go back home to pick up Grandpa and take him to the hospital in the big city for checkups and treatments. Growing up with my grandfather and watching him work, I understood his love and admiration for carpentry. I asked my grandfather to let him teach me how to make some simple crafts and moved a bench for him to sit next to me as I sat next to him when I was little. When it was time to flick the inking pot, I helped Grandpa fix the ink line while he was responsible for floating the ink line on the wooden board like before, as if by magic. Every day after dinner, I accompanied my grandfather for a walk around the village, I would always ask him questions about woodworking, and he would answer them with great interest, always smiling when he answered my questions. I always called many children to my home on weekends and brought them together to do small woodworking, and Grandpa was our teacher. "Be careful, little kids, the hand holding the wood must be at a certain distance from the other hand holding the carving knife." He was always smiling, and when he was teaching I could see the same enjoyment as when he was busy doing woodworking before. He has slowly become more cheerful because he knows that he still can do what he loves and pass on the culture of woodworking in other ways. It is never a pair of bright eyes that determine a person's ability, but a pure heart that takes responsibility for the people and things he loves deeply.

Grandpa seemed to like the inking pot, but when the villagers persuaded him to adopt machines to cut and carve wood, he insisted on still using the traditional inking pot for measuring as well as hand carving. Although he was old and in poor health, and even a bit stubborn, he still took on the responsibility of supporting our family and insisted on doing what he loved, just as the inking pot served as the foundation of the woodworking industry and supported the entire industry. Even though Grandpa is now completely blind, he still plays with his wooden treasures and smiles every day. Although he can't finish his work as before, whenever I go back to my hometown to visit him, I always see him stroking the lines of the wood with his cocooned fingers, as if reading his past.