The sepia tones awash in the setting sunlight. He steps back and says, “Daddy,
watch.” There’s not a moment I
don’t watch. Take in like a
breath, knowing the air and these moments will disappear in a matter of
seconds, or so it seems. If we get
18 years with our children, one-third of my time with him has gone. Six years...how?
The news of him came just past daybreak and just before
Thanksgiving in ’06. We were new
at this, she and I. The smoke of
childhood still smoldering, still slightly aflame. In our second home, making it our own. Painting walls.
Hanging frames. Smiling.
Dreaming. Knowing there was
more and, soon, it would come. I
still feel that: the unknown.
His middle-namesake, my father, still sits in those
moments. In that 30-year old mind
of mine, he would be there always.
Or at least another 20 years.
He lasted 20 more months.
Cancer filled his brain and our lives, shattered them beyond
recognition. Just 11 months after
my own son’s birth, he passed on.
I swore I wouldn’t be him — my father. His tendencies were
the ache of Achilles to me. They wore me to the core.
The cancer wore him, revealing the best and sometimes the
worst, though not in his own volition.
It ravaged his mind and stole his dignity. But he remained and still remains.
I love him. I swore I wouldn’t be him.
But, I’ll be damned.
That evolution seems impossible, stopping a river of time
and genetics barehanded. He
appears in swatches. His figure
shrunken in my son’s outline. An odd feeling, seeing your father in yourself
and your son at once. One smile
echoes another. The same big-eared
grin, 50 years and two generations apart.
And there he sits as if on my shoulder. The inflection of voice, the tone of
empty threats, the days on the sidelines, watching, coaching and hoping. I find myself wandering at times,
wishing for the invaluable but inaudible.
Given the One More Chance, I’m not certain I could
speak. Only mimic my son: “Daddy,
Watch” as I point to the blond haired boy hitting the baseball and reading a
book or his little sister dancing and singing.
My son will begin his second year in school in just over a
month. He’ll grow out of his
hiking boots and baseball pants.
He’ll need a new shirt and make new friends. He’ll have his first
innocent kiss. Smiling, unaware of
what just happened. He'll grow and learn and move out. Write his own story.
Time won’t stop.
It is cruel. It is vastly
unsentimental. It steals and dismantles.
“Daddy, watch,” he says. I can’t turn away.
The fear of missing all of it, any of it, really, rises with me in the
morning. If only he knew how much
I watch.
