One morning, I was waiting in the car for my youngest daughter — who, true to form, was running late — while she filled up her water bottle before school.
It was the same ritual we’d been through a hundred times: keys jangling, door slamming, traffic rolling by. Nothing memorable. I sat there with the engine running, radio off, scrolling through something on my phone I didn’t care about.
And for some reason, I thought of the laptop.
Not mine.
My mother-in-law’s.
And not a laptop, in that moment — just a pile of its insides, scattered in an almost frantic arc across the floor of my brother-in-law’s bedroom.
He was thirteen.
I found him sitting cross-legged on the carpet, the machine entirely dismantled around him.
Tiny screws in a mostly organized pile. All the pieces — some of them never meant to be pulled apart after the factory line — were laid out like a puzzle that had no picture on the box.
He looked up and froze. His face held that unmistakable panic of a kid who knows he’s gone too far.
He must have thought I was one of his parents when I opened the door. And if I had been, he probably would’ve been grounded into the next year.
But it was just me, and relief settled in.
We walked upstairs for dinner and told the rest of the family we were “working on something.”
We didn’t say what it was. We just ate fast, then excused ourselves to go back to our project.
I’ve built computers before. Taken apart my fair share of laptops and put them back together in working order. But what I saw on that floor was something else entirely.
He’d gone deeper than necessary. Disconnected things that shouldn’t be disconnected. Removed components just to see what was underneath.
And now, there we were: no manual, no YouTube tutorial, no step-by-step guide.
Just a kid with a scattered machine, and a guy with a working knowledge I hoped would be enough.
So we sat. Side-by-side on the carpet, in the mess. Reconnecting, refitting, retracing steps.
At one point, we closed the bottom cover — proud of ourselves — only to realize we’d forgotten to reconnect the screen’s ribbon cable to the motherboard.
So we opened it back up.
I think about that night a lot. It actually surprises me how many times I’ve gone back to it.
Not because the laptop worked in the end (it did).
And not because we had three leftover screws that never found their home (we did).
But because that night taught me something I didn’t have language for back then:
Sometimes the rebuild matters more than the plan.
Sometimes you don’t need a blueprint.
You just need to stay in the room with someone and keep going.
Life gets dismantled sometimes.
Careers stall. Marriages fray. Friendships fall apart. Bodies break down. Dreams you’ve carried for years get interrupted, rearranged, or quietly die when you weren’t paying attention.
And most of the time, you don’t get a map for how to put it all back together.
You just sit with the scattered parts of whatever used to be — and start. With no tutorials and no neat timeline. Just presence, patience, and maybe someone beside you who isn’t there to shame the mess.
I wonder sometimes if my brother-in-law would’ve kept his passion for building computers if that night had gone differently.
If the panic had been met with yelling.
If someone had grounded him before he got the chance to rebuild.
If shame had replaced curiosity.
He’s got one of the nicest custom gaming setups I’ve ever seen now.
And I don’t take credit for that.
But I do wonder if that night gave him the courage to try again. If it showed him that taking something apart — even too far — isn’t the end of the story. If it helped him learn that failure isn’t permanent. That rebuilding isn’t always a punishment.
Sometimes, it’s a partnership.
There are parts of my own life I’m still trying to rebuild.
Things I pulled apart — sometimes recklessly, sometimes because I didn’t know what else to do. And now I’m sitting in the aftermath, trying to remember what went where. What connected to what. What can still work, even if it’s not perfect anymore.
No blueprint, and no guarantees.
Just an engine idling in the driveway and a memory that reminds me: rebuilding is slow, often clumsy, and always worth it.
Not everything will go back the way it was. Some screws might never find their place. Some corners might never quite fit like they used to.
But that doesn’t mean it’s broken.
It just means you’re rebuilding.
And that is enough.
Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .
I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
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