I The Cottage

I learned today that my father apologized to J.C. for the accusations against him. Perhaps he thought he had found God. Snooks and I sit looking over the bay where the Captain used to winch runaway logs from the water to build the weather beaten deck we now shiver on. The Captain’s wife, my mother, rarely remembers him now as time telescopes and she reverts to being her Daddy’s Daffodil Girl. She has always been a powerful woman, larger than life to me, five foot nine and three quarters plus three inch heels. I have always been a more timid hue, smaller, quieter, mousey colouring and a studied invisibility. She dresses like a Canadian Spring, pink blossoms and glistening rain jewels splashing on Pacific drenched islands of cedar and arbutus; I dress like a lumberjack, indistinguishable from the rain forest except for a touch of red to warn off hunters, or indeed, to beckon them if I am the intended kill.

I cried today as I sat with my son, damaged by the hunt, shattered by my naiveté.

Snooks looks almost good, slender in new duds. Dark navy dress pants, a crisp white shirt and a diamonded black tie are worn to honour his grandmother. He has had a shower and smells like clean ocean spray. Clippers trimmed half his beard before the charger gave out on the ferry. The shaver couldn’t tackle the scraggle and Snooks hasn’t the dexterity for a razor. In the Depression, men, tramping town to town in search of work, had patches on thread-bare clothing. My twenty-three year old, never employed son wears that trademark on chin and cheek.

You may wonder at my dwelling on appearances. I know - now - more than most, that things are not always as they appear. I also know that things are often exactly as they appear. Our abilities to rationalize, justify, analyze, imagine, invent and on and on create a maze of possibilities and explanations. Lost, like the Minotaur, it becomes difficult to discern the way. Too clumsy and bull headed and literal, subtleties are lost on me. I never understand jokes. By the time I analyze them, the humour is gone. Even today, in the absence of an enduring joy, I wonder if some cosmic joke was played on me.