28 Mar 2024
I was four years old and with my dad,
He insisted I sit on a folding metal chair,
which I remember in detail more than 50 years later.
It was red, the paint was worn on the areas where most contacted.
It was cold, I could feel its bitterness against my legs.
The wind was blowing across the lake,
It too was bitter and I shivered.
Would he notice?
No.
I tried so hard to be patient -
I loved being with him and if it was to fish,
so be it.
I still remember the images and sensations of that day across the decades.
I did not know that he would disappear shortly after this,
or I would have tried to be even more still for him.
I did not know that I would see him twice more - a couple of hours only,
when I was 19.
How was that four year old to know or understand such things?
People who abandon their children frighten me, still.
If you could discard your child you could do anything.
How could anyone consider fishing - or time on your back with a stranger - a better use of their time,
than being with their child?
For years I mourned him.
It must have broken my mother’s heart for me to ask after him.
When you are a parent trying to be two,
that is hard enough -
I know.
That day on the lake with my dad,
I was so happy.
I felt so lucky to be with him.
Loss was coming,
but in reality,
it was his.
I heard after he died,
alone and along the road in the Nevada desert,
that he had spent years bragging about what his child had become.
That child on the lake,
who he had abandoned.
Imagine being proud of someone you abandoned.
My life became better after that day -
you are always better off without these sort of people.
I found someone who was even better than a dad,
and I became a better dad without this man on the lake.
Sitting on the lake,
my feet dangling from that red chair.
It was one of his best days,
even if he didn’t understand it.
Strange that I can remember that chair so vividly,
but no matter what,
I can’t see his face.
Aroha nui,
Lee Sturgis
leesturgis.eth
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