I keep seeing his face. My father. Eighty-five now, but his hands, they still remember. He built that machine, that lathe, back when he was foreman. (Before I was born, even.) Asked me to fix it. *Me.* His own son, fifty years old, still on the factory floor, still covered in grease and sweat, just like him. (But never good enough, not really.) He just looked at me with those eyes, the same ones I see in the mirror sometimes, just... waiting. He built it. He knows every bolt, every weld, every damn wire. I remember him telling me stories about it, how he wrestled the parts into place, how it hummed just right. (Back when he was foreman, before the layoffs, before the whole damn place changed.) Now it's broken, and he wants *me* to make it right. Like I'm supposed to somehow inherit his touch, his magic. It's a machine, not a memory. But it feels like he's asking me to fix something much older, much more worn out than just some broken gear. (Something in me, I suppose.) He's slowing down now. My mother... she's not well. I’m always there, always doing something, fixing something for them. (Always. It never stops.) But this. This is different. This is him looking at me, the son who never moved up, the one who stayed right where he left off, and asking me to mend a piece of *his* past. (And maybe, just maybe, I’m afraid I can’t.) It feels like a test. A final one. And I just feel this deep, empty ache. Like I'm failing him all over again.