Stay in touch

Pacific and Eastern Time are in a grudge match as the sub-arctic’s perpetual daylight has ceded to the darkness I’d quickly learned to not miss. Stuck in the non-sleep of rolling over and checking the clock in the hours well before the birds begin to herald morning, a memory of vacationing on Vancouver Island sidles into the bedroom. The name of the park is gone forever, lost in the cedars that enveloped a campground on the west side of the island. A small lake with a dock connects to another small lake by way of an arterial creek of clear, luminous green. Overhanging branches crane above the centre of its flow, casting large broken shadows over boulders that create hollows on the creek bed.

The campsite hugged the north lake and a dock stretched outward to lake vines reaching from the muddy floor. If a child lay down on the sun-warmed planks and hung their arm low, wiggling their fingers below the lake’s serene surface, small fish would approach through the vines and nimble at the digits. This is a remarkable experience for a child, an event that gives the false impression of a special and previously unknown connection to the world. A small panic pinches this child each time the fish’s mouth closes on the side of their index finger but they must focus and maintain the gentle rhythm of a pendulum. If instinct takes over – if they jerk and giggle – the bond is broken. To be with the fish they have to keep inside the best part of what childhood offers to the world.

Down past the creek, the other small lake is shallow and pebbly, safe enough for kids whose swimming skills are less than honed. Because of the shallows the July sun warms the green hued water and you can idle along, splashing or submerging a few feet below the surface. It has depth enough for the known world to diminish and the new world of water to become a totality (for as long as little air-filled lungs can hold up their end of the bargain). Taking a shallow dive, the cautious swimmer might decide to open their eyes in this placid environment.

* * *

I awake from this forgotten memory as I concurrently open my eyes below the surface. Staring back is a rock the size of a small, flat gingersnap with the sharp, clear image of a wide-open human eye. There is pure panic as I splash and scramble my way off the lake-bed. Once standing I timidly venture to examine the pebble-strewn lake-bed but am unable to find the rock. It is an object of terror that escapes rationalization. There’s no possibility of picking the stone out and laughing nervously at my folly, of then skipping it across the lake’s surface in a show of skill and superiority.

Father’s Day has just passed and out of a sense of love and duty, as well as a hope of avoiding my Mum’s passive recriminations, I send an email to my Dad at his workplace in China. I expect no reply, as I know him well enough – another email lost in the void of his busy life and distanced personality. Shockingly, he replies promptly, asking how things are in The Yukon, telling me of joking with coworkers that Dawson can be found on a map by looking in the middle of nowhere. The fact that my Dad has responded is a welcome surprise. That he has been discussing me with co-workers is more surprising, but when he writes at the end, “keep in touch”, I wonder what has happened to this tough, traditionally molded Northern English man, the man who hears no conversation that doesn’t involve magnesium or car parts or, ideally, both.

* * *

The creek between the lakes ran parallel to a quiet gravel road so you could walk along and pick out the best fishing spots. The boulders top out at half the creek’s width and offer still recesses in their lee ideal for small brook trout to gather. This is a creek for spinning not casting – worms will not do for these small fighting fish. Spinning is a method much more suited to a child. Not requiring the more dedicated skills of fly-fishing it nonetheless requires the fisher be able to repeatedly and accurately cast the lure past the lee, reeling through without getting hung up on any number of water-borne and creekside obstacles.

The fish are biting but it is dad that catches all the fish save one. He is confident and adept but is also generous and supportive, passing on his skills to his less coordinated and overly introverted son. It is one of those occasional, episodic moments in the life of a boy raised by a hard father when tenderness comes through. It is the same tenderness found in an email closing with “Stay in touch”. And while those moments might not make up for many tasteless jokes, stony silences, violence and disinterest, in the these years that are my middle and my dad’s wane I am hopeful for some manifestation of love that might prove a man to be more than he offers himself to be.