Fathers, generations and the perfect day

I’ve been reading my dad’s personal history lately.  I had it for years in hard copy but it wasn’t until I scanned it to a text file and copied it to my phone that I read it cover to cover. It’s been an interesting experience, reading about his early life, his life as a bachelor, his marriage, having kids, joining the church, struggling with his career. When I read about these things I think of the parallel times in my own life. Thus my father becomes a peer. In fact his history ends in 1964 when he was 44 years old, and I’m well past that age, so I look at him through the lense of an older man relating to a younger one. It’s a bit of an odd feeling, this leveling of generations; I think I would have liked him, would have liked to have been one of his buddies.

This leveling of generations plays with our sense of time - all times become one time and there are not old people and young people, parents and children, but just human beings with many shared experiences. Perhaps the next life will be like that. It reminds me of the great essay by E.B. White (of Charlotte’s Web fame). He wrote many essays for Harper’s Magazine and there’s one classic from 1941 called, “Once More to the Lake”. He talks about how, when he was a boy, his family vacationed at the same lake every August. Years later, after his father’s death, he decides to take his son back to the cabin on the lake, and it is as if the lake is locked in time: the sights, sounds and smells are all the same, prompting memories so vivid he imagines he is trasported back to his childhood, so that at times he forgets which time he is in. As his son experiences the lake, White is struck with the fact that now his role has changed and he is the father, sleeping in while the boy sneaks out to paddle around at dawn. There is a sensation of a fundamental unity of human experience between generations and also a reminder of one’s mortality.

I remember a summer experience with my father. When I was ten we lived in PEI and that July I extracted a promise from my dad to take me to the beach after work, on the next sunny day. The day came and he got home from work, tired and a bit cranky, but I begged and mom reminded him he’d promised, so he relented. We got into our swimsuits, grabbed the snorkelling bag and took off. I remember driving in the car with Anne Murray's “Snowbird” on the radio and a tremendous feeling of well-being in my heart. Dad had been told about a nice beach and decided to try it out. An unmarked dirt road lead off the highway to the sea. We drove to the edge of the dunes and walked over a crest of soft sand to find a beautiful white beach all our own. The water was calm and the afternoon sun was shining brightly over the cove. We waded in waist deep, put on snorkels, masks and flippers and set out together.

I have been snorkelling many times since that day, but never in such magical conditions: the water was comfortably temperate, the sun warm on our backs, and we could see clearly to the bottom, the light streaming through the tall seaweed to the broken rocks and sand ten feet below. There were schools of fry darting in and out, crabs and lobsters scuttling over the sea bed, and beautiful hues of blue and green over the red Island rock and corrugated sand. We swam along slowly, our bare, cool arms brushing. Dad would point to me and I would turn to see a lobster; he would dive down, distract it with one hand and grab it behind the claws with the other, bringing it back to the surface for me to look at. Then we would let it go and watch it float, perfectly still with arms outstretched, down to the sand where it would scurry to hide under a nice safe rock. I have been snorkelling many times since, but never without remembering that day, hoping to recreate it: but without success. That day has never repeated, and perhaps that’s more due to the idealizing effect of memory than the weather conditions.

Of course, the best part of the experience was having my dad to myself, feeling his mood lift as we experienced a perfect summer afternoon together. I don’t know if he remembered that day - adults are a bit slow when it comes to what makes deep impressions on children. I can only hope I gave my own children something comparable. I really hope I did.