Dad turned eighty-eight years old today, and for his birthday gift I fixed his toilet. It was not a job I had done before, but how hard could it be to turn off water, drain the tank, remove the old bolts and washers and tank-to-bowl gasket?  How hard?  Three hours later I finished the job.  I had told him he could use the bathroom at any time—this toilet could not be taken fully off-line—but that he had only one flush.  But I forgot I had removed the tank, with the flushing mechanism, silly me.  A gallon pitcher from the kitchen sink flushed everything down, and then I replaced the tank, after driving to three national chain hardware stores that did not stock the right Toto part.  I made due, and toilet no longer leaks.  And I gave him my new book of poems, including six poems about Clementine, with whom I made friends during the ordeal of my separation exactly ten years ago, when I lived in a friend’s construction zone remodel project after his drug-dealing non-rent-paying tenants destroyed the house.  Clementine was a spindly-legged spider in one shower-ceiling corner, and she greeted me every morning and every evening, and I talked to her and told her my troubles.  She could not respond, but she quietly listened: she was my only constant, always there for me, not judging me, not scowling her contempt, not sending me away, not caring about my flaws or my brokenness or my heart-trauma.  Dad thanked me for both gifts—said he would get to reading my book right away—and  the family all came over for dinner and carol-singing and sweet token gifts and homemade chocolate peanut-butter coconut-caramel cashew-coconut-raisin gooey bars which every loved, and they listened to me read the story of the birth of Jesus, and the feeding trough, and the announcing angel and skies of singing warriors, the wise men from the east, and the light of that singular star.