When I was about nine, my dad and I spent a special day together. It was August, and soon autumn would touch my world with bright orange and red, my favorite colors at the time.
Daddy heard that this year would be the best salmon fishing
in about three years, maybe the best opportunity ever. Even though the two of
us only fished with cane poles, we both wanted to watch the expert anglers’
successes. We headed south of the Downriver area of Detroit with a loose set of
places we’d visit.
Our first stop was Michigan Memorial Cemetery. My dad let me
drive our station wagon along the graveyard’s lanes, but only for a few
minutes. He then took the wheel once again, a look of determination on his
face. “There? Maybe there? Things have changed,” he muttered to himself.
We parked and got out. Daddy
reached into the back of our vehicle for some flowers. We walked solemnly
amongst the graves of people who were at one time alive, breathing and dear to
their loved ones. Daddy lit a cigarette as we zigged and zagged through a few monuments.
“Ah, we’re close!” he said as he pointed to a grave. “I
remember this.” Together we read the words on a headstone. The poem was
something like,
“Where
you are, I once was. Where I am, you will someday be.”
It was very somber
and sobering to me. I felt very much alive!
A little farther and we were at the grave Daddy was
searching for. “Your grandmother wanted me to lay these flowers on my brother’s
grave, He would have been forty-three. He was only eighteen when he passed
away. That’s almost twenty-five years ago!” Then he whispered something like where
had all that time gone. (Forty-three seemed so old then. Now my own nephews
are about that age and even older! I am sixty-one myself. I repeat my father’s
thoughts: where did all that time go?) He put the flowers down on the
stone and we spent a quiet moment together.
Taking deep breaths, Daddy’s tinged with grief, we carefully
stepped back and returned to our vehicle.
We drove to Monroe and parked our car in a lot by a river.
There were hordes of people, picnic baskets, families, anglers of all ages. My
father watched the skilled and the unskilled as they pulled up a few salmon
here and there. He’d remark how some of them were fishing correctly and others
were using illegal means. We stood near the dam and he said that only weeks
before, some boys who weren’t much older than I, had been pulled under the
current. He pointed to the surface of the river and then to the dam.
“Take a look,” he said pointing to the calm above the dam.
“Looks smooth, right? You think that’s safe to swim in like your backyard pool?
Well, it isn’t.” Then he pointed at the dam. “Those children were deceived by
the tranquility of the surface, but there’s an undertow that pulled them under.
They’d surface and get jerked under there again and again. One of them drowned.”
He quoted something about “Still waters run deep,” and not
to trust the first appearance.
I remember the afternoon becoming overcast and we decided to
go home. On that drive, I thought about the uncle I never knew, the cousins I’d
never have and currents that I could not see. I thought about rivers,
undertows, boys who would not grow to become fathers.
All my father’s lessons have served me well in life. He’d
teach me with stories. I later found Daddy’s method was The Cherokee Way of the
storyteller: Observe; Instruct. Occasionally my dad would lecture. I hated
those times. I enjoyed the stories coupled with real-life examples from nature.
I wish these days parents would teach their children and those children would
listen.
I realize that now attention is short and brains have been
conditioned to snatch a snippet here and there. Many things that are displayed on social media
will not help us survive or thrive.
I hope my family’s lessons will help my grandchildren to
learn. I hope that these stories will inspire. I hope that when I am no longer
here, my words will carry on, because there will come a time that you will be
where I once was, and I will go to a place that you will be someday.
