Most of us are kind and generous if we’re expected to be. When we pass a Salvation Army bucket we put in 10 bucks. If a neighbor is sick we take a casserole and a card. We pick through the pantry to find canned goods for the food bank, contribute to Toys for Tots, and pony up for the collection plate.

But usually, somewhere in the back of our minds, we keep score: We had them for Thanksgiving last year, now it’s their turn; that scarf she gave me for Christmas cost about $50 so I’ll get her this $49.95 blender; it took him a month to return the hedge trimmer so next time he wants to borrow it I’ll tell him it’s broken.

My husband and I have spent the past six months working with a man who seems never to keep score. Instead, John Borovka – JB – has consistently been on the giving end of our odd-couple relationship as we have labored together to turn a tree into a kitchen.

It began with an old, tall mango tree that was being removed to make way for a new house. “That’s a shame,” I said to a neighbor whose chain saw was at the ready. “Can’t we save this tree instead of chipping it into little pieces or taking chunks of it to the landfill?”

Sure, he said, just do it by tomorrow morning.

One thing led to many others, and by noon the next day the tree had been sawed into three huge sections and carted away in three pickup trucks, all of them headed for a veteran woodworker’s mill yard.

Over the next two years, “Tad’s tree” was slabbed, stacked, air-dried, kiln-dried, “cooked” for termites, “frozen” for termites, sprayed for termites, and reduced to inch-thick boards.

Somewhere along this journey I got it into my head that this beautiful but toxic and often twisty wood should become the kitchen cabinets I could not otherwise afford.

When I asked for help from friends who build houses and make furniture for a living, they first told me I was crazy, then disappeared into – where else? – The woodwork.

Undaunted, I kept dropping by the mill yard to visit my mango and learn more about wood from the master woodworker who so far was the only one not scoffing at my dream.

On a trip to the dentist, I told him about the tree and added that so far I hadn’t found anybody willing to help my husband and me make our cabinets. He promptly sent me to his house to look at his newly installed kitchen. Awed by the craftsmanship, I asked for the maker’s name: John – JB – Borovka.

Armed with his cell phone number and my passion for the mango tree, I tracked him down and made my pitch. “Sure,” he said, stopping me in mid-appeal. Thus JB entered our lives with a laconic, one-word welcome.

Nearly a year later, our kitchen cabinets are mostly installed, and not once has JB presented us with a bill. He accepts the money we regularly scrape together to give him, believes us when we say there will be more to come, and reassures us that it won’t take the rest of our lives to finish paying him.

JB always thanks us for our payments – no matter how paltry – with good humor and grace. He has never lost his temper with us. He has never belittled us or berated us for our lack of knowledge or clumsiness. He always returns our confused phone calls, even on weekends. He acts like he doesn’t notice our awkwardness with his woodworking tools, and barely raises an eyebrow at the clock when we are tardy. He patiently repeats instructions three times so we will understand what he wants us to do, and praises us when we get it right.

In this litigious era, what amazes us the most is that JB trusts us to safely use his power saws, drills, routers and sanders without seeming to worry whether we’ll screw up not only our wood but our fingers.

He doesn’t recite all the liability reasons he cannot allow us to learn rudimentary woodworking at his elbow, and instead assigns us our own work table, turns the machines on, and says “have this finished by quitting time.”

Working in a dirty, dusty, drafty old warehouse with JB and his good-humored and highly skilled assistant, Tracey, has proved to be one of the most enlightening experiences of our lives. Thanks to them, we now have new skills we can put to use for our own home, and for the benefit of friends.

Thanks also to JB and Tracey, our mitered corners are flawless, our face fronts finished with the texture of satin, our round-over edges symmetrical. We have trimmed, glued, puttied, and massaged nearly 720 running feet of mango into 16 cupboard doors and 20 drawers.

Through it all, the tall, skinny fella who looks like an Ichabod Craine with stand-on-end hair never seems to worry about the future or act as if he is keeping score. He gives generously to all of his time, his expertise, his good humor, and his daily lunch of homemade shrimp tacos warmed in the microwave.

Last March I asked JB if he thought our kitchen cabinets would be finished by Thanksgiving. “No problem,” he’d said. “Piece of cake.”

Except for a couple of mis-placed hinge holes drilled on the wrong side, a missing door panel, and an AWOL third coat of varnish on some of the trim pieces, it is.

JB’s generosity, good nature and refusal to keep score have resulted in a beautiful, functional kitchen that ought to last us through the rest of our days, including every Thanksgiving to come.

When others backed away from helping two amateurs tackle a Herculean project, JB stepped forward, knowing that doing otherwise meant we'd have no kitchen cabinets, Brushing aside the warnings of a mutual friend that “They have no clue what they’re getting into, you’d better run for it while you can,” he continues to fit us into his busy production schedule.

JB embodies the notion of unbounded generosity that inspired Native Americans to bring bountiful gifts to the immigrant Pilgrims who had so little to share in return.

Aside from functional cabinets and drawers, JB’s willingness to allow us to pester him for months as we learned new skills and worked towards a sense of accomplishment has been, and always will be, a true THANKS(for)GIVING gift to us.

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