Winter 4

Chapter4

Dan looked into the stove whose embers were all aglow. His face reflected its fiery light.

"I've really missed you and the talks we used to have, though they never seemed long enough to say all I wanted to, and now how much time do we have left together, Dad?"

"Well, you know your schedule better than I do, but don't you have to be at the ferry on a certain day?"

"We can stay here for two nights, no more." 

“Then let's make the time count," responded his father. Father and son hugged and went to their bedrooms without showing each other their faces. 

On their only full day together, the adults rose before the children and went for a stroll on the beach; it was wider than Dan remembered it to have been. That would be due, he knew, without his father reminding him, to the increase in precipitation as snow, and to its build-up on the mountains of the interior. They chatted about the distant past when the man was still a carefree boy with his whole life ahead of him, when what he wanted most of all was to be a football star on the high school team.

"When I refused to sign the papers for you to play football because of the injuries I'd seen players suffer, and because of your dislocated knee, what effect did it have on you that I didn't see?"

"That's a harder question to answer than it seems," replied his son. '”Can you stand the bald truth?"

Instead of answering, his father said, "I imagine you hated me for it, that you felt I was arbitrarily preventing you from realizing your dream. I think now that your unwillingness to give college a real try and to develop yourself intellectually may have been your way of showing me how wrong I'd been to deny you your sport."

“Something like that," answered Dan. "Though I don't think I reduced my feelings to that kind of a tit for tat. I knew you thought you were doing it for my own good, but I certainly didn't see it that way. What really got to me was your certainty that you were doing the right thing. You were so damn sure you were right that I couldn't begin to try to persuade you to change your mind. And Mom didn't try either, at least not  hard enough." There was a long silence as the two men made their way over the sand.

"Do you remember when the resentment began to fade?”

"It gradually wore off after I left home, after you did some nice things like crating up my bike and sending it to me. But the really big change came when you attended my graduation from the Academy and I understood you to be proud of me, as I was too. That was when I started to appreciate and love you as an adult." They stopped walking and turned towards each other. "Then came the time of trouble when you and Mom stood by us till we got through it. That put everything into perspective once and for all time."

"You know, son, when I started to get frail and really felt my age, I was also able to feel your love more fully. I want you to go away from here knowing that your love has lit up my life for years. Even across miles of countryside, it has been the warmest and dearest part of my old age. Now across the sea and in another nation, I'd like you to feel my love for you a constant in your heart."

"I shall, Dad. You'll never know how much your love has meant to me. It has been something I can always come back to when times get tough and I'm sure it will be there for me always."

"Thank you, Son. Now let's go make breakfast for us all."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Previous chapters published January 10; January 17; January 24.

From Dorset, UK to Tobruk

Michael James-Mined in England. There thrown on the wheel for impress of first hands.

Turned and shaped in Berkeley.

Fired and painted by students of Tamalpais district which he left in 1993. 

Writes essays, stories, and poetry.