and easy.
That’s it.”
The boat’s captain had moved over to offer his point of view.
I felt complete surprise hearing my father’s voice orders countermanded.
It was a first; and it was a revelation.
“What? What I was doing was just fine?”
I am shocked.
And simply hearing an accurate reflection of what I was doing—just holding the line lightly with my fingertips in this case—was a recognition that hit me like a tremor. It was a foreign experience, but oddly comforting.
My world expanded in that one moment, for a brief moment.
“It was possible to be noticed, to be seen?
It was possible to be doing something right?”
Revelations can happen in a moment, but absorbing them can take a lifetime.
The void created by the absence of recognition leads to self-blame.
Regrettably, that is the only explanation available to the ten-year-old me.
I can’t see much beyond my own experience.
I can only know the present and surmise that I am at its center.
I do see my own reflection, watching it as it takes shape.
Knots can happen, especially when trying to catch something.
I know that my father will take over and take care of the new knot in the fishing line.
“Give that to me.”
The hand-over happens.
The untangling happens silently in my father’s large hands.
And the hand-back happens also in silence—time after time, scene after scene.
“How is it that I’m not a part of this?”
I wonder silently.
“It’s my line.”
“It’s not even that big of a tangle.”
“I’m happy in a way that the line is freed up, but…
“I’ve learned that thing again.”
“I can’t do it for myself.”
More than that—
I know I can’t do it for myself now with this knot, and likely not later with any subsequent knots that surely will arise.
A Day at the Beach
It was the beach and it was summer and I was six years old.
A regular venue for my father’s vacation from his job at the Navy Yard was the beach.
Sometimes it included a rental cottage for a whole week.
Other times there were day trips when the highlight of the drive to the beach became a sort of competition between me and a friend along for the day.
Who could spot the approaching, looming roller coaster first?
A contest determined by true child-honor and naïve child-honesty.
A competition for which the outcome was not important.
A contest decision that was never even questioned.
It was not worth it.
An acute awareness of our mutual refuge was, however, very important.
It was strongly felt by each of us.
We had frequently experienced the value of that refuge.
We respected and allied with each other when it seemed others did not.
We get past the roller coaster.
We anticipate the day.
All soon move to the shore.
“Hey Dad, do you want me to fill the bucket with sand?”
“No. I’ll take care of it.”
Parking the blanket a good distance back from the water’s edge, my father had begun his predictable summer-construction-event-in-the-sand.
He seemed to begin with a mental blueprint of sorts, like sizing up a golf shot.
The siting was secure.
No errant waves would have a chance of touching his work.
My father was actually quite talented.
An engineer, by trade.
He designed electrical systems for submarines.
After 30 plus years he had risen to a supervisory level, though he never did seem proud or comfortable with himself.
Today he was sculpting a life-size elephant in the sand, and it was an all-afternoon event for all to behold.
He went at it with steady purpose.
Not much of anything else seemed to matter.
Peanut butter sandwiches on soft white bread were available in the picnic basket.
My friend and I both felt adrift as my father circled the sculpture, but we watched, and we were duly impressed.
An occasional walker-by circumvented the scene and offered,
“Nice elephant.”
My father would pay no attention to that, for sure.
The likeness steadily emerged:
First the trunk, now the tusks curving skyward, now the sturdy legs.
A black stone became an eye peering seriously outward, and a large flap of an ear covered half the head.
My father worked carefully, so as to have all his elephant parts neatly in a row.
I moved away, closer to the water’s edge.
I was soon joined there by my friend.
We would try our own sand project—a
