Shower
He is in our shower stall, kneeling, in shorts and a t-shirt. I stand naked, shivering. A flow of warm water spills off me onto him. A line of surgical tape squares covers tiny incisions that run up and down my legs, ankles to groin. Post-surgery instructions required the unwrapping of tight leg wraps, then the removal of all tiny band-aids with warm water. After the effects of four pregnancies across a decade, my sluggish varicose veins, blue-purple and inflated, had been stripped — pulled out of my legs and feet the old-fashioned way, pre-laser.
Sons flopped on couches in the living room, my mom is making us dinner in the kitchen, and I am too sore to reach all the incisions — all the places that will eventually leave scars. In the flow of blood drops and water, he joins me. One at a time he coaxes each piece of tape off a wound.
Lake
His Wisconsin childhood spanned a land of lakes. The most familiar water holes had names like Big Butternut, Coon Lake, the Pond-behind-the-farm, and Lake Superior. The year the well went dry, he filled and hauled water in milk jugs with his dad from the pond. He found the not quite dead cat by that pond with his Dad. He fished with his Dad. He hunted for agates on Lake Superior with his Dad. He was shaped in ways that only happen by waterholes.
River
Spruce Grove Campground dots the North Platte River in Divide, Colorado. A stretch of slow river winds between boulders, through low sand bars, under a small bridge, and past a deep-water hole that’s good for jumping. Our family set up tent camps along the North Platte in powdery dirt. We filled big float inner tubes next to our cars in the hot sun, then clenched teeth in the brisk water. Tubes piled in a tower, boys dove into the middle. Tubes floating around bends, we held each others’ ankles like a pod of otters.
He tended the yellow waterproof bag of inner tubes and pumps and stored it in the garage for years, for just-in-case. Because he always wanted to be ready, always wants to be equipped to help others launch their own adventures.
Stream
Stick Boat Race Guidelines: Most available shallow streams can be considered as viable grounds for a stick boat race. Once an appropriate setting has been established, the preparation step will include a time of re-engineering the stream with rocks and small boulders or any available logs. These props will aid in the creation of various straightaways, obstacles, shoots, and flumes. The course will need to meet the approval of all engineers before the race can commence.
Next, each racer will find a suitable piece of branch, bark, or twig and fashion it for both appearance and optimum speed for water current. Once each racer has procured a boat and the finish line is marked, the race may begin. Racers may walk alongside the shore and assist if a boat becomes stuck or entangled but may not remove a boat from the water in order to walk it further down the course. The first participant to cross the finish line wins the race.
Waterfall
He hunts for waterfalls, finds life near the thunder of them. Once on a camping hike with the younger sons, he stripped down to his whitey-tighties and waded in to feel it fully, the cold of clear flowing snow water that was tumbling over boulders, hidden in the trees. He stepped in waded and slid on with a slap and slide fell on a group of large rocks. The Boys stood wide-eyed and watched as blood ran down his brow, as he held his crooked glasses. We all hiked carefully back down the path through ferns and forest, and all was well. But each son reckoned in their own way with that unsettling feeling of watching a parent fall.
Tide Pools
He makes his way to the shoreline at low-low tide to find tide pools of small crabs, squirting anemone, a rumored octopus. He crouches over old tires and under rocks. He is one that seeks to discover what is only seen when the blanket of sea pulls back from the shore. He walks carefully where the most tender things of life are exposed.
Canal
We stand by the ship canal, chilled on a fall day, me, my mom and dad, him; parents and grandparents, side by side. We wait for the long troughs of the 100-year-old Ballard Locks to fill and empty. Boats, tugs, barges enter and lower or rise with the water levels before releasing into Lake Union or out to Puget Sound.
My mom’s fingertips turn white and get painfully cold as they always do. She does not have the right gloves, as she often doesn’t. So, he takes her hands and puts her fingers under his armpit. They wait for her nerve endings to return to normal. They wait for the blood to flow warm again. Side by side on the concrete shore with her hands tucked in his armpit, they wait for the locks to release sailors into the sea.
Sea
Now he lives by the Salish Sea like a lighthouse keeper perched above the rocks and swales, easily found, often sought. No longer the heavy lifter, some house projects require stronger arms and sons who lift. Fatherhood has shifted with hair in the same grey streak and a similar gate as his Dad.
He is the one with all the remaining boxes, photos scanned and saved, stories sorted. He passes along what was handed to him from immigrant farmers and pastors and teachers who lived on farms and homesteads, and parsonages. He resembles what was, holds what is, and hands all he holds to those who hold all that will be.
A lightkeeper who stands watch as the moon pulls the tides, he is the one who stewards the safe place to land, and always, always welcomes a good stick boat race.
Image Credit:
Watercolor picture of Steve and my sons by a stream.
“Stream Works” by my talented friend Lois Rosio Sprague.