A Letter to Myself at Twenty-Six, Who Never Once Looked Down at the Foot of the Ladder

To me at twenty-six, standing on the ninth rung of an aluminium ladder,

I'm forty-one now. I'm writing in the storeroom behind the shop, sitting on a cardboard box that still has an outdoor unit inside it, with tape from the copper piping stuck to my fingers. I'm not writing to brag that things got better. They might not have. The shop is about the size it was, and my back still hurts when I bend for too long. I'm writing because there is something you are standing right in the middle of and can't see.

A narrow house at the top of an alley, a third-floor balcony, the outdoor unit hanging off the wall. You climb up with one foot hooked on the iron security grille and a pencil in your mouth because your hands are full. The copper pipe is freezing against your wrist while the sun beats straight down on the back of your neck. On the ground, Tín, seventeen years old, holds the foot of the ladder. He holds it from nine until nearly noon. His shirt is stuck to his back and both his hands are clamped on aluminium rails so hot that I can still feel it for him when I think about it now.

You never look down.

Remember those mornings when everything ran smooth and the customer said, "You're quick, aren't you"? I remember something now. Every time you stuck your hand out without turning your head, the fourteen was already lying in your palm. You thought your own skill could read your mind. It couldn't. Tín read it. He watched your back, watched the bolt you were turning, and picked the right size. He guessed right nearly the whole morning, and you never asked where he'd learned to guess.

One time the ladder shook. You barked down at him:

— Hold it tight.

— It is tight, anh.

— Then why's it shaking?

— Um… because you leaned to the right.

He was right. You'd reached too far and all your weight had gone to one side. The ladder wasn't to blame, and neither was the kid. You knew all of it within a second. Then you said nothing, pushed a foot against the grille to find your balance, and went back to the bolt. One sentence in your head, and I still remember it word for word: let it go, how does it look if the boss admits a mistake in front of his apprentice.

That's the part I'm most ashamed of, so I'm saying it first. He was seventeen and he could say the true thing. You were twenty-six, good enough to earn a living, and not good enough to say two words: "Yeah, my bad."

About never looking down, I let you off by half. You were afraid of heights, and looking down made your legs shake, so you only looked at the bolt, the pipe, the casing in front of you. That part is real. But it's also real that you were used to someone standing below the way you're used to a floor, and nobody thanks a floor. Which half weighs more, I can't tell. Sitting here now, I still can't.

I only saw it late, because of one afternoon three years ago. The stairwell of an apartment block, the new apprentice gone down to the van for something, and I thought it would only take a few minutes, so I climbed alone. The foot of the ladder slid a hand's width on the polished tile. I held the grille until my knuckles went white and stood very still until he came running back. In those few seconds hanging there, what came into my head wasn't fear. It was Tín's wet shirt, stuck to his back.

I did go and ask. Anh Sáu, who owned the old shop, said he'd heard Tín was working in Bình Dương, or maybe Đồng Nai, he wasn't sure. I don't have a number. I don't know if Tín remembers me, and if he does, what he remembers. It could be "hold it tight" more than anything else. I'm leaving it like that, not adding anything to make it smoother.

Gratitude like this isn't pretty. It arrives late, with shame attached, and with no address. I'm also not telling you that you should have felt it back then. You owed money on the motorbike, you were afraid of being late for a customer, you were worried the bolt had stripped its thread. A man busy climbing a ladder has no room in his head for anything else. I only want you to know there's a person at the bottom, and he is standing in the sun because of you.

Yesterday I tried. Hải, my apprentice, was holding the ladder for me in a stairwell. When I was done I climbed down, looked at him, and said, "Thanks." He blinked, said "Yes, anh," then asked if I needed the pliers. We were both awkward, as if we'd done something wrong. One sentence like that probably isn't enough for him to remember. I'll keep doing it.

I'm not promising you'll turn into someone else. I'm only promising myself two things: look at whoever held the ladder when I come down, and when I'm wrong, say "yeah, my bad" right there, in front of a customer if that's where it happens. The second one I do unevenly. Last week I forgot.

I wish you a steady stance. I wish Tín, wherever he is, has someone holding the foot of his ladder now.

Me, forty-one, with a pencil tucked behind my ear

This article was created with AI assistance.