The Rainy Saturday

Rain hammered against the windows like a thousand tiny drummers, and Luca pressed his nose to the glass, watching his soccer game disappear into puddles.

"No soccer today," Mom said, which Luca already knew, but hearing it out loud made his stomach sink like a stone dropped in a pond.

The whole day stretched out in front of him — long and empty and gray, just like the sky.

Then the phone rang.

"Luca!" Mom called from the kitchen. "Grandpa wants to know if you'd like to come over."

Luca grabbed his raincoat before she even finished the sentence.

Grandpa's house smelled like sawdust and coffee and something cinnamon-y baking in the oven. Grandpa stood in the doorway of his garage workshop, wearing his old flannel shirt with the missing button, his white hair sticking up in three different directions.

"Perfect timing," Grandpa said, rubbing his hands together. "I've been waiting for a rainy day and a good helper. Today, Luca, we are going to build a birdhouse."

Luca had never built a birdhouse before, but Grandpa made it sound like they were about to build a rocket ship to Mars. He felt a little fizz of excitement in his chest.

Grandpa unrolled a piece of paper on his workbench. It showed a drawing of the most beautiful birdhouse Luca had ever seen — with a little peaked roof and a round doorway and a tiny porch where birds could sit and look out at the world.

"We just need some wood planks, small nails, glue, and paint," Grandpa said. He opened his big red toolbox. Then he opened the cabinet where he kept supplies. Then he checked the shelf above the window. Then he checked behind the shelf above the window.

Then he got very quiet.

"Well," Grandpa said slowly, scratching the back of his neck. "It appears we have... no wood planks. No small nails. And no paint."

Luca stared at him. "So we can't build it?"

Grandpa looked at Luca. Luca looked at Grandpa. Rain pounded on the garage roof.

"Now hold on," Grandpa said, holding up one finger. "I didn't say that. I said we don't have the right materials. That doesn't mean we don't have any materials."

He started pulling things out of corners and off shelves and from behind old boxes — a stack of cardboard from a delivery, a jar of dried-up markers, a roll of duct tape that was mostly used up, some popsicle sticks from summer, a tube of glue that you had to squeeze really hard, and a piece of old garden fabric.

Luca looked at the pile. Then he looked at the beautiful drawing.

"Grandpa," he said carefully. "That stuff isn't going to make that birdhouse."

"Nope," Grandpa agreed cheerfully. "It sure isn't."

They started anyway.

Grandpa held the cardboard while Luca traced the shapes. But cardboard, it turns out, does not like to be cut straight. Luca's first wall came out looking more like a wobbly potato than a rectangle.

"Hmm," said Luca.

"Hmm," said Grandpa.

They cut another piece. This one was better — mostly — except for one corner that curved when it should have cornered.

Then they tried to glue the walls together, and the glue came out in one giant glob that got on Luca's fingers and Grandpa's sleeve and somehow on Luca's ear.

"How did it get on my ear?" Luca asked.

"Glue is mysterious," Grandpa said seriously.

The walls kept falling over. They'd press two sides together, hold perfectly still, count to twenty, and the second they let go — flop. Down they went, like a dog that doesn't want to sit.

Luca could feel his face getting hot. "This isn't working," he muttered.

"Not yet," Grandpa said. Just that. Not yet.

He grabbed the popsicle sticks. "What if we use these as braces? Glue them along the corners, inside, like little bones holding the walls up?"

Luca frowned, but he tried it. They pressed a popsicle stick into each corner and wrapped duct tape around the outside for extra hold. They waited. They counted to twenty. They let go.

The walls wobbled.

But they stayed up.

"HA!" Luca shouted, and Grandpa pumped his fist in the air like he'd just won the World Cup.

The roof was the next disaster. Cardboard doesn't like to fold into a neat peaked shape. It buckled and crumpled and looked like a hat that had been sat on.

Luca tried three times. Each time, the fold went crooked or the cardboard split along the crease. He could feel that prickly, frustrated feeling climbing up his neck.

"I think we need a different idea for the roof," Grandpa said, leaning back on his stool.

Luca stared at the pile of supplies. He stared at the crumpled cardboard. Then his eyes landed on the garden fabric. It was green and a little bit stretchy.

"What if..." he said slowly. "What if we don't fold it? What if we make the roof out of the fabric? Like a little tent?"

Grandpa's eyebrows went up. "Now that is an interesting idea."

They cut the fabric and stretched it over two popsicle sticks taped into an upside-down V shape. Then they glued it to the top of the walls. It sagged a tiny bit in the middle, which made it look like the birdhouse was wearing a sleepy hat, but it held.

"That's actually pretty cool," Luca said, tilting his head.

The dried-up markers had just enough life left for Luca to draw little flowers along the walls — they came out streaky and faded, which Grandpa said made them look "artistic." Luca drew a Welcome sign above the round doorway, except the W was too big so it said Welcome, which made them both laugh.

They added a popsicle stick porch. It tilted slightly to the left. They added a duct tape chimney, just for fun, even though Grandpa said he didn't think birds needed fireplaces.

"You don't know that," Luca said. "Maybe some birds get cold."

"Fair point," said Grandpa.

When they finally set the birdhouse on the workbench and stepped back, Luca looked at it for a long time.

It did not look like the drawing.

Not even a little.

The walls were uneven. The roof sagged. The flowers were streaky. The chimney leaned like it was trying to peek around a corner. The whole thing was held together by popsicle sticks, squished-out glue, and sheer stubbornness.

Luca looked at Grandpa's beautiful plan on the workbench, and then back at their lumpy, crooked, totally weird birdhouse.

And he started smiling. A slow smile, then a big one.

"I love it," he said.

"Me too," said Grandpa. And he meant it — Luca could tell because of the way Grandpa's eyes crinkled up at the corners, the way they always did when he was telling the truth about something important.

They set the birdhouse on a shelf by Grandpa's back window, just under the porch overhang where the rain couldn't reach it. Grandpa made hot chocolate with extra marshmallows, and they sat in the two big chairs by the window, watching the rain and the birdhouse at the same time.

"Grandpa?" Luca asked, wrapping both hands around his warm mug. "Do you think a bird will actually use it?"

"I think," Grandpa said, taking a slow sip, "that a bird looking for a home in the rain would be very glad to find a place someone worked that hard to build."

They sat there together, quiet and warm, listening to the rain tapping on the roof like tiny, grateful fingers.

And the funny thing was — Luca couldn't even remember what the birdhouse in the drawing had looked like anymore.

He just kept looking at theirs.