The kids and I have been hard at work on summer projects.

A few days ago, we decided to try to make a dent in the basement mess.

The basement has, over the years, served as a canning-type of kitchen, a storage area, a makeshift laundry room, a workshop, and let’s not forget that we have a coal furnace over in the corner, which provides a nice, gentle layer of coal dust on top of just about everything.

Cleaning this is no one’s favorite job, which is why we keep putting it off.

I’ve tried to convince the kids that if we just go through one pile every week or so, in about twenty years, we might have it all cleaned out!

But some of our other projects required some things that we were sure had to be in a pile somewhere, and the recent relocation of some old shelves and dressers downstairs made us think that maybe we’d actually have a spot to store some of the items a little more neatly.

So, we dug in. Things were moving along pretty well when we came across a very large unopened box. It had Steve’s name on it and the farm’s address, so at first glance, I figured it might be something that he’d ordered for the great boat project and either hadn’t needed, or never got around to installing. A closer look, however, and I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

It was a hammock. An extra-large, “luxury” hammock. While the kids were like “Oh cool! A hammock! When did we get a hammock! Let’s go set this up now,” I however, wanted to puke. That wasn’t just any hammock. Steve had chosen it out of the catalog of gifts that his company presented him with on his twentieth anniversary with them. Those of you who have been around the corporate world for a while know exactly what I’m talking about.

Just in case you’re not familiar with it, a lot of companies participate in these programs, where at milestone anniversary years, usually five, ten, twenty, etc., you get a “gift” of some sort. Traditionally, it was a watch or something along those lines, but somewhere along the way, it became a catalog where you could pick anything from household appliances to jewelry to what Steve and I called “things you’d never actually spend the money on yourself, but as long as someone else is paying, what the heck.” The value of the items increased with your years of service. Over the years, we acquired a fishing pole or two, a set of candlesticks, and a few other items which were not particularly noteworthy.

Steve always said he would have preferred to have an extra day or two of vacation or a dollar or two in his paycheck instead of whatever token gift was offered, but that’s not how things work.

The other thing on Steve’s mind was that at twenty years, he was fully vested in the pension, and eligible to take early retirement.

He had been considering doing that and going to work for another company closer to home for several years, and was taking steps to put that plan into motion, so he had mixed feelings about celebrating his twentieth anniversary.

We’d gone over the catalog a few times, but nothing jumped out as a want or a need. Soon he began getting reminder emails from corporate that this needed to be done. We let the kids look through it and even they were less than impressed by the selections.

Finally, he decided on the hammock. He thought of it as symbolic, even though he wasn’t going to spend a lot of time reclining in it, it was a good reminder that someday, he would have the time to kick back. We also knew that the kids would get a ton of use out of it and talked about making it the focal point of our backyard “relaxation” area.

Of course, thanks to Steve’s delay, and then the general processing time, the hammock didn’t actually arrive until the fall, when it was too late in the year to put it up. “In the spring,” Steve said.

Well, of course, he never saw spring, and the hammock was banished to oblivion, forgotten under other boxes and stuff that we piled up in the basement. Twenty years for a reward that he never got to relax in, the metaphors write themselves.

The kids were eager to get it set up, even marveled how easy it was to get it up and functional.

Then they battled over who was going to sit in it, and then again as they tried to figure out the right balance to get in and out of it.

Of course, it was G that figured out the ins and outs of it and got it positioned in just the right location so that it’s shady, but also not directly under the trees where the leaves and bird droppings can fall into it. I did give them a little history on why we had a hammock we weren’t using in the basement, and they all get that it’s a connection to their Dad and have vowed to enjoy the heck out of using it.

Later, when the novelty wore off and they’d gone off to other adventures, I took a turn in it myself.

It really is a great hammock. It’s sturdy, but not structured, so when you get into it, it kind of seals you up like a burrito, if you want, or if you orient yourself a little differently, you can sprawl out completely. I’m pretty sure Steve would have taken dozens of naps out there, although Duncan hasn’t quite figured out how to climb in yet and doesn’t like that it doesn’t stop moving when I lift him up, so he may not have allowed Steve much rest, but we’re working on it.

Between the kids and I, we will do our best to make up all the hours Steve should have spent in it.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears Saturdays in the Times News