Smooth Narrow Paths

I know my father best as a figure shrouded in mystery. His image is a man retained in my memory as tall, and strong, with arched eyebrows and piercing eyes. He speaks in a heavy, and sincere tone. With well pronounced words that shoot like arrows. He is a cowboy. I remember him sitting in his chair staring at the TV. as if there was something to be angry about. But this is how he always looked. His face was hard and dark and his brow always seemed to be arched in warning. His jaw was strapped by a thick, graying beard. He’s watching Bonanza or some other cowboy show with a sweaty Heineken between his fingers. He gave me a sip and laughed that I cringed my face. When I wanted to play, I climbed him like a tree and he let me down hanging from his arm. I remember from upstate New York, we often drove the countryside up north to Canada to see his brothers and sisters. My father, mother, sister, brother, and I. My dad greeted every toll patron with, “Howdy ma’am”. When we arrived, we would stay for less time than it took for us to get there. The smell of cow-pies in the countryside is nostalgic for my brother and I. In those days everything was alright.

I cannot know what I felt after my sister, brother and I left with my mother. I was too young to understand what it meant and why I was afraid to ask questions. I asked my mother only once, sensing and fearing the oddness of a situation I could not understand. And she answered me, saying there was something Daddy had to do. I assumed that he had some duty to attend to. Like John Wayne, tipping his ten-gallon hat to his lady before riding off into the sunset. I left it at that and never asked again.

I didn’t think a lot about him as I grew up. There was no resentment, I was simply too involved in my own middle school and high school society to think about what was not in front of my eyes. He visited a couple times, not for very long just a couple hours. Probably shorter than it took for him to get here. When the news reached my siblings and I of his visit, there was a certain numbness or absence that seemed to drain the news of its presumed spectacle. Cetainly there was no animosity within the anouncement, but niether was there excitement or anticipation. If anything, I just wanted to avoid the awkward scramble for dialogue. I was 15 and still at the age when I lacked any capacity to hold a conversation about anything. I noticed he was slim, with a shaved face. My sister asked how everything is, how everyone is. I sat searching for that old feeling of security. Like blowing at cold embers and agitating them to burn but I was too detached to allow it for myself. He asked me to walk him to the train station. It was a good walk on a beautiful summer day. The sun peeked through shaking leaves and shaded the sidewalk. I discovered a caterpillar pulling itself up by its thread as we walked pass and I noticed him smile at my curiosity. I told him I wanted to get a job so I can save up to buy a car but he told me I shouldn’t worry about that.

As an adult I think it is important to analyze relationships important in your life. To analyze what you owe to these relationships and how they affect you. In my ever travelling, river of thought, A great boulder was snagged in the current. It is my father. I understand him through the conviction of my personality and the tenderness of my memories. The most important of all, beyond the affection he displayed for my mother, and the charming smile that escaped him, I remember his devotion to god and the powerful will to do good that I recognize in myself. This will is overwhelming at times but I am reminded of its grace through my father. My earliest memory of him comes from Jamaica. He was a successful architect with many employees. He built houses, churches and schools. Sometimes at night, we drove around the orange lit streets of the city. He handed out containers of full dinners and mints from the back of the van to homeless people stop by stop. Some came to know him well and blessed him for his kindness. My brother and I laughed and chewed mints in the backseat, looking up through the back window at the night sky as a great canvas, while amber glowing lamps trailed ribbons of light as we pass them. This memory gives me strength to pursue a greater purpose than myself. I had a dream just recently that reminded me of that moment. I was a child walking barefoot on a smooth and narrow path. The path was hard and light like marble. There was no daylight, or night sky, simply darkness as if there was nothing else. On either sides there was a black swamp that stretched til forever. It was still and mysterious, silently threatening. It was topped with floating lily pads and tangled seaweed. Yellow pollen and algae frothed at its edges hiding whatever lay beneath. But still I continued forward on this narrow path with my father many steps ahead of me and not looking back. I followed it aimlessly until the path arched up like a hill. I used my hands to climb up and grip on the path but I slipped and slid off the side, splashing into the blackness. I could feel the panic in my heart as I sank helplessly. The weeds that anchored from the pits of this swamp turned black and made the shape of arms reaching out for me begging for me to fall into their grasp. I was outside of myself and saw that I was sinking closer to their reach. Inside my adult dream, I was scared like a child. I felt a strong grip clasp my wrist and with one swift pull I was yanked out of the water dripping, hanging like a prize fish. He let me down on the path and continued walking. In this dream I felt what I haven’t felt since I was a child. It was the warm sense of security I once enjoyed being my fathers son.