My father must have heard me walking past his bedroom that late afternoon. He often went to his room before dinner. I assumed he was awake probably watching TV or reading the newspaper, something hardly anyone did anymore, but he did.

He said through the closed door, “I’m still breathing.”

“I’m going out for a bit. I’m walking down to the lake,” I said. I stood listening for a reply. There was none. I stayed a few more minutes not making a sound. Then I heard him mumble something to himself in a quiet, monotone voice. All I could hear was “thank you” said twice, but I didn’t think he was talking to me.

I walked out our front door. Tree branches were clawing the air. The outline of the sun was discernible through the wispy clouds that tried to cover the marble sky, but they weren’t quite thick enough to filter out the sunlight. A fat snowflake landed on my thumbnail as I punched in the security code to lock the door behind me. After a few steps, I could see that a thin slice of blue sky had been removed since our trip to Florida. It was replaced with the wood framing of a third floor addition to the house closest to our lake. Carpenters were stealing my sky.

My house was in a forested complex of about twenty, one-acre lots that all shared a common lake about the size of a football field. There were a few large boulders along the shoreline. I stood on one of them and let the breeze rejuvenate me. I missed the ocean. Large snowflakes poured out of the clouds like bubbles from a wand. The wind tossed them in every direction but downward.

The surface was still covered with a few big chunks of ice which floated with the water’s currents into a cove where they bumped into each other and made sounds like a giant wind chime. Nearby, three black dogs were wading close to shore where their owners stood watch. One of the dogs tiptoed to the center of the lake navigating its way via scattered chunks of solid ice.

As the sun set, the shadow from the trees lining the lake grew longer. There were lingering spots of light here and there as if the ground was being illuminated by stage lights. I found one tiny spot where I could position my face for one last blast of sunshine. I noticed what it was that had drawn the dog out onto the ice. On the other side of the lake, there was a small, white dog yapping away with his head held high. Darkness was slowly settling in to hide the trees’ shadows. As I waited to see how the dog would find its way back to shore, the sun set and the night blended with the shadows. When I could no longer see the dogs, the sound of their barking also disappeared.

I thought about how in two months, I could be on this same lake in a row boat with my hand hung over the side feeling the contrast of the cold water on my skin and the warm air on my head and torso. That’s the kind of sensation that brings instant relief when monotony gets in the way of living.

There had been many moments in my past when I found myself in the midst of astounding surroundings but couldn’t really see them because I was thinking about the aggravating parts of my job or my marriage or parenthood. I gradually learned that spring mornings, fall afternoons, and summer sunsets all had the power to heal any emotional ailment as long as I didn’t numb my senses with day-to-day stress.

On my walk back home, I saw what looked like a shrinking, life-size snowman in the yard of one of my neighbors. Someone had found a perfectly arched twig for its smile. I watched the lights come on in homes one by one. People still hid inside, lost in dim lighting until spring would finally show itself.

In the winter, lights coming on early meant a long evening ahead of doing dishes, homework and bath time. In summer, it meant that all was well; there was nothing to do and soon it would be the forbidden hour with no bedtime in sight; just a magical blur of swimming, bike riding, hide and seek and root beer floats. I’m back to my childhood, sticky with dried sweat and dirty knees. Instead of home being a quiet sanctuary, in summers it was never tame. The windows are wide open. The wild sounds of the night are pouring in.

Dylan’s Jeep was in the driveway when I got to my house. I loved that he still knew he was welcome to pop in anytime, and I was happy that he wanted to spend time with his grandfather. I found him rummaging in the kitchen. I took over his scavenger duties and sent him to the living room. I stumbled upon some moldy guacamole from the refrigerator and threw it in the trash can. I grabbed a handful of fresh tomatoes and garlic, the only two indispensable ingredients for tomato sauce, and then boiled a large pot of water and tossed in some penne. The steam soothed my sinuses. I stared at the water and wondered if my dad would ever start sharing anything personal. Why doesn’t he give me some advice about aging? Some advice about Dylan. Some philosophical or nostalgic story. Nothing. I was getting nothing from that man.

“Astronomers are poets,” I heard from the living room my dad telling Dylan, “the only difference is that their oracle is science rather than words.” I went to get in on the action. My dad got up and left. I heard him whistling “At Last” by Etta James as he walked away.

“What was he saying about astronomers?” I asked Dylan.

“He said that they’re poets. I disagreed with him. I said one involves creativity and the other doesn’t. He gave me an astonished look and said, ‘What is science? Nothing more than theories. How are theories formed? Imagination. Where does imagination come from? Creativity,’ he said. ‘Poets construct, they use words. Astronomers construct too. They use science.’ He has a point.” I went to answer the doorbell.

“I thought your father might like some homemade cinnamon, chocolate chip muffins.” I didn’t recognize the man who was handing me a tray with an elaborate red ribbon. I wanted to tell him that my dad doesn’t have a sweet tooth except for ice cream, but I resisted the urge.

“I’m Wade Lankford,” I said. We shook hands and then he left. I read the note on the thank you card taped to the tray:  “Thanks for helping us with the snowman.”

At the time, I thought “What about me? I wave to every stranger in the neighborhood. I maintain an immaculate lawn and a spectacular flower garden. I decorate for Halloween and Christmas and fly the flag on Independence Day and Memorial Day. But he gets the muffins? How the hell do they even know him?”

My mother’s eightieth birthday would have been in three days. I was planning on making sauerbraten, one of her favorite meals that she had learned from her German grandmother. I thought about birthday gifts that I had given her over the years and how she fussed over how perfect they were. I don’t remember my father buying her gifts on her birthday. I’m guessing that he did, but I can’t remember even one of them. I was tempted to mention to him that it was her birthday. I was afraid of a dull, unemotional replay so I didn’t say anything hoping that he would somehow remember and acknowledge it in the next few days.

I wanted to scream at him that he had completed his mission decades ago, that it was time for him to let down his guard. I wanted him to know that he was no longer my protector or disciplinarian. It wouldn’t make him look weak to now tell me about any financial worries he might have had as a young man or talk to me about the pangs of retirement that he might have felt or tell me about how to handle the aging process. My mother spent so much of her lifetime listening to me talk endlessly about my classmates, my sports heroes, my professors, my clients and later Denise and even Laura. Why wouldn’t my father listen? Why wouldn’t he tell me things?

I chopped some fresh parsley and grated some parmesan cheese. I shouted to both of them from the kitchen,

“Last warning. Don’t be a minute late. Pasta will be served promptly in exactly three minutes. I insist on it being al dente and piping hot.”

When I was a kid, there was a polished brass bell mounted on the brick wall of our screened-in back porch. My father would ring it when it was time for me to hurry home to eat. My friends laughed that I was conditioned to run home with fear every time I heard it. Once, I was playing kickball at Mark Smith’s house beyond the range of the bell. My father’s dark green Oldsmobile pulled up, and I could not believe that he had opened his door and was walking towards me with his bowed legs and a subtle stoop to his posture. My friends all stood and stared. Even my closest friends probably didn’t recognize him since he hardly spoke to any of them whenever they visited my house. All I wanted was to disappear from the scene so I hurried towards the car.

“You didn’t hear the bell?” he said as he grabbed my arm, yanked me and threw me onto the front seat.

“No,” I said sniffling and terrified to be within arm’s length of him.

“I rang it and rang it,” he yelled.

“No. I didn’t hear it,” I repeated. I had no other defense. That was the one and only time in my life that my father ever used force. I was shaking with fear and disbelief and struggling to hold back the tears. As soon as he pulled into our driveway, I jumped out of the car and ran through the basement door up the stairs past my mother in the kitchen and up to my room where I sat on my bed trying to comprehend what had just happened. I don’t remember what I did after that.

I suppose my mother served me dinner in silence and I ate by myself. I can’t recollect when I told her, and I can’t remember exactly what I told her. It might have been that evening or maybe a day or two later. It erupted out of me like something that needed to be released. I wanted her to assure me that he had done something that he wasn’t supposed to do.

“Oh, no he didn’t,” she said wanting to convince herself when I described what happened. I remember those exact three words of hers. I expected her to react with shock, but I was relieved that she was going to treat this episode as reasonable whether she believed it to be or not. For her own peace of mind, she needed to dismiss it as something less dramatic than what I had experienced. Whatever casual, unrelated comment she made at that moment or whatever routine task she then initiated, indicated to me that she was going to protect both me and my father. She was not going to put any guilt on either of us. To dwell on it or discuss it or react with any sign of indignation would have made it more harmful and so we moved on, leaving this one ugly event behind us.

I didn’t know how I would ever face my friends again. The next time they saw me, they laughed out loud. That was not the reaction I had anticipated and it felt good. I had feared that they would see my father as a monster, which would make me a disturbed child, but instead, they saw me as the kid cool enough to do something so rebellious that it warranted stern parental discipline. I was now in the elite group of the bad kids who get suspended from school for doing something brave and defiant. I was happy to still be in good standing with my pack of friends. At some point, I realized that getting in trouble at home meant that I was loved. The kids that aren’t loved, don’t get in trouble with their parents. They eventually find trouble elsewhere all on their own.

The three of us took turns shaking extra parmesan cheese on our pasta between bites. I think I was the only one who looked out the window and caught the distinctive silhouette of a raccoon with hunched shoulders walking across the railing of our deck. The sunset was behind him.

“I saw you talking with Roger earlier. What’s he up to?” I asked my dad.

“Oh.......Nothing.”

“It’s hard to believe that everyone from the old neighborhood is gone now. Johnny Kilger, Jim and Vera, The Zelnicks.” No reaction. I was hoping for any kind of simple, nostalgic response. I would have even been happy with some flippant reply. He didn’t have to give me any sign of missing them; just acknowledge the fatalism or the irony or the poignancy of close friends dying. But he seemed at peace. I guess he learned to not let hardship get ahold of him. Maybe that was the lesson from losing his parents at a young age. It could have been that I was looking for suppressed emotions that just weren’t there. Perhaps he just knew how to cope.

My father was always nonchalant about his friends and relatives dying. Except for my Uncle Ted, my dad’s other three siblings were already deceased. I remember when his brother Paul died in Houston. He and his sister were on the phone for hours planning their trip to his funeral and making a list of people to notify. Within the family there was always shock when someone passed. But not my father. He would just shake his head and walk away, these days a little more stooped over than usual.

My dad was the youngest in his family. Whenever anyone would refer to him as the baby of the family, he would correct them and say that he prefers to think of himself as the last of the litter which to me, implies the neglected, the last to be picked.

My mom was still living when Doc Dickerson died so I didn’t get to witness my dad’s reaction to that news. I’m guessing that it would have hit him pretty hard. Mr. D was a little older than my dad and had become a widower just around the time his health was declining. My dad used to take him to his doctor appointments and wait for him. I have an image of how that must have looked to others in the waiting room seeing an elderly man being helped by someone not a whole lot younger. My dad would also run errands for him, grocery shopping and picking up prescriptions.

Denise called Dylan as we were finishing up dinner.

“Here, she wants to talk to you.” He handed me his phone.

“How’s your dad doing?” she asked.

“OK,” I replied.

“Any news from the cheerleader?” she asked.

“Nothing. No news,” I replied. Denise and I often wondered whether or not Evelyn was pushing for him to move back in with her. Referring to Evelyn as the cheerleader goes back to when we first learned that my dad was still in contact with her after my mother’s death. There were at least fifty of us at the luncheon after my mom’s funeral, and my Uncle Ted was suggesting that a few of us family members meet in Bedford Springs in a few weeks. Denise and I heard my dad say, “The cheerleader says she wants to come along.” After all those years of being close friends since high school, my dad still thought of Evelyn as the perky, popular cheerleader.

“Who was that?” my dad asked after I handed the phone back to Dylan.

“It was Denise.”

“I thought it might have been Evelyn.” I couldn’t understand why they rarely talked.

”Denise is upset about her mother. She’s getting very forgetful and it’s worrying her.”

“How old is she?”

“Ninety.”

“Well then, Denise is right. Her mother is getting forgetful. She forgot to die. That’s too old to live.” That was probably the first sign I saw that he was aware of his mortality and maybe even contemplating it.

“She’s a good woman,” I said.

“Of course, she’s a good woman. Ray was a great guy. Behind every great man is a good woman.”

“They don’t talk much about the corollary to that axiom,” I said.

“What’s that?” my dad asked.

“Behind every floundering man is a fucked-up woman.” That little crooked smile of his crept onto his face.

When Denise first told me that she was concerned about the future of our marriage, she said it was best if the two of us took a break for "several moons.” That was at a time when she was using Navajo dreamcatchers to keep the negative energy out of our home.

Denise was spoiled. And her mother was spoiled. My former father-in-law bore the brunt of so much of it. When I first told Denise that her father was a saint, she countered by telling me about his temper.

“How would he explode?” I asked.

“He would start breathing heavily.”

“That’s all? I call that managing one’s anger.”

Dylan was leaning back on the legs of his chair. My father was finishing the last bite of his pasta.

“What’s your favorite season?” I asked my dad. Without hesitation, he replied, “The fall.”

“I love the smells and color of the sky in the fall and the beautiful leaves,” I said.

 “Because it’s short,” he said. I waited for more. He went back to eating.

“What do you mean?”

 “I like it because it’s short. Beauty is most appreciated when you know it won’t be around forever.” He didn’t ask so I didn’t tell him that my favorite season was summer.

Dylan went to the kitchen to clean up.

At that time, Dylan was about the same age my father was when I was born. I did that math in my head, and it scared me a little. Dylan was certainly a caring, loving person which is what we expect from a father. But I had a hard time seeing him as someone to count on to know exactly what to do in any situation. Was that the kind of person who raised me—someone who always had the answers? Or had my dad always been a little lost and had to wing it most of the time? That’s how I always felt parenting Dylan.

“I was going to make sauerbraten for Mom’s birthday Thursday,” I told my dad.

“OK. Where did he go?” my Dad asked stretching his neck to peer into the kitchen. “I wanted to tell him one of the greatest truths about women.”

“Maybe I could benefit from this same wisdom. What is it?” My dad said nothing. He went back to reading his newspaper, and I went to the kitchen to join Dylan. My mom used to say, “He reads the print right off the paper every day but he never has any idea what’s going on in the world.” She would hear from a neighbor or friend about some current event in the news and ask my dad to fill her in. I remember his clueless reactions. About the only comments I ever heard come out from behind his newspaper were prices on ham at Foodland or sports scores. None of this fit with the man lecturing us about astrophysics. Or maybe it did.

Dylan was wrapping up the remains of tomatoes and onions, rinsing out pots and wiping down the granite counter. I heard my dad whistling from the living room. I envisioned him sitting in his chair staring at the ceiling and whistling. First, I heard “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits. Then he went right into “Do You Want to Dance” by Bette Midler. What happened to the songs from the forties and fifties? Why weren’t those in his head? They say that as we age, we regress, reminisce, go back to the eras that were most meaningful to us.

“Huh,” I said. “A medley.” I’m not sure if I was talking to myself or Dylan. Then I heard my dad say, “They still make movies in black and white. What’s up with that?” I went to see what he was watching. It was Pleasantville from 1998. I didn’t reply to his comment, but I understand the comfort of seeing only black and white. I don’t mean a more simplistic world. I mean a quieter, softer world. There are cases of deaf people who after surgery experience the sense of hearing, and it’s so overwhelming that they ask to go back to being deaf. I get it. I love colors but taking a break from them can be soothing.

“It’s nice,” my dad said.

“What was that?” I asked.

“It’s nice... black and white.” I don’t think he was being nostalgic about the days before color movies. I just think he saw what I saw.

“You know grandpa was very close with Doc Dickerson, the owner of the company where he worked,” I told Dylan. He and I were chopping up carrots, potatoes and celery for the soup I was going to start slow cooking in the morning. “I remember a conversation they had one day in the office when I was about ten years old. Grandpa was talking about how much he loved a ham sandwich on rye bread with Swiss cheese and lots of mayonnaise... ‘washed down with a cold beer,’ he said. It opened my eyes to hear him talking to someone the way that I talked with friends about our favorite candy bars or potato chips. Usually, the conversations I had with him were about subjects that I didn’t understand at all. But mostly, he just never said much to me at all. When I heard him talking to Mr. D about ham sandwiches, it made me feel that maybe my father’s world might not be so far from my own. It made me start looking at people like Mr. D a little differently. Our worlds were bridged a little bit that day. As I got older, I started to see that I would someday have to do the kinds of things my father did. After that day, I decided that I liked ham sandwiches too, and now forty years later, I still think of Grandpa and Mr. D whenever I sink my teeth into a deli sandwich piled high with ham and Swiss. And I try to always wash it down with a cold beer.”

Dylan smiled and said, “That’s nice.”

“Why do you think he talks to you so much?”

“He’s my grandfather.”

“I’m his son. He hardly ever talks to me.”

Dylan squinted at me and laid his towel on the counter. “Are you holding onto resentment? You’re like Jesus on the cross when he cried out, ‘Father, why you fucking with me?’”

“Why hast thou forsaken me? I believe that’s the phrase.”

“Same thing. Let it go Dad.”

So much of what I had ever learned about my father was by being a fly on the wall. But I wasn’t a fly on the wall. I was right there. And he knew it. Was that the only way he could tell me things about himself that he wanted me to know? Was Dylan his conduit to me?

The Sargasso Sea is located in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. It’s a body of water surrounded by another body of water. There is no land mass to define it. Instead, there are a series of currents that determine the outline of the sea. It’s possible to discern its coastline on that basis, but it’s subtle. Its water is warmer than the Atlantic Ocean, and it has a much higher salt content which makes it the perfect environment for the seaweed that covers its entire expanse.

Maybe I’m the Atlantic Ocean to Dylan, and his grandfather is the Sargasso Sea. We are two bodies, one within the other. A dad within a dad. I’m the bigger one, but he is unmistakably present although sometimes hard to identify.

When Dylan was just arriving at the doorstep of his adolescent years, he and I had a few knock-down, drag-out emotional conflicts. It usually started with him challenging me in some way. He would stay out too late or neglect a chore or ignore his homework. At first, I would sternly reprimand him, which would throw Dylan into a defensive position of insolence. That would lead me to step up my own pressure which usually meant that I would end up criticizing him. Dylan would interpret the criticism as an insult and feel hurt. That in turn would lead him to become uncooperative almost to the point of being despondent.

At that stage, I’d lose control and unleash enough frustration to make Dylan cry, which would cause him so much embarrassment that he would refuse to say another word to me for days. That’s when I’d become tender and lenient, which after a while, would lead him to slowly warm up to me. When I would find him talking nonstop about all kinds of subjects, I knew then that he had unofficially offered an apology. Conversation was his way of telling me that he really enjoyed my company and wanted to be close.

My dad walked into the kitchen like a famous actor taking the stage to a round of applause. “Here’s some advice I want to give both of you,” he proclaimed. I want to say that he had his hands up in the air like a great orator or prophet but that would be an exaggeration. “Women love dancing.” Dylan and I waited patiently. “Women love to dance which means that they love to be seduced. They will be swept off their feet by a man who can dance, a man who can take the lead and usher them into new territory. A man who can move them—physically and emotionally. A man who will give them a chance to know that all the preparation they have made has worked. The make-up, the clothes, the posture, the hair—it all paid off. A woman wants to know that the man is buying the whole package and is jumping through hoops in the process. He’s paying the price yet he’s taking charge. He’s being respectful yet he’s taking what he has coming to him. That is what a woman wants.” I saw it as a breakthrough that he was talking to both of us, not just Dylan. I don’t know what sparked it.

Then he exited. I’m sure he didn’t want any applause, but it would have seemed appropriate. Dylan and I just looked at each other. Then just as he was about to disappear through the swinging door, he turned around and said, “Wade, let’s go see the talkative lesbian tomorrow.” We often went for breakfast at a diner where the manager was a masculine woman who loved to talk nonstop with everybody. “Then maybe we could go for a walk.” He and I never went for walks together.

I knew what he was doing. There was one other time when he tried to compensate for his neglect. I was about twelve years old playing catch in the yard with my friends. He came home from work, got out of the car in his white shirt and tie and walked over to Gary to borrow his mitt. It was the first (and probably the last) time I ever saw him throw or catch a baseball. I was a little surprised how natural it seemed for him. He wasn’t anything like the Pirates who probably weren’t much younger than him, but he could play as well as me or any of my friends.

We tossed the ball back and forth in silence for about three minutes. My two friends sat on the lawn and waited. They knew that this wouldn’t take long. He was like an offensive lineman declaring himself an eligible receiver before a fourth and goal play. Once the play was over, he went back to being a lineman, ineligible to catch a pass.

After my divorce and after I stopped working, I began to realize that perhaps an abundance of true friends had been missing from my life for too long. I had always been exposed to an endless parade of people: friends, family, neighbors, classmates, clients. But there were never many people in my day-to-day life who I trusted in the same way as the kids who had surrounded me in my childhood. Most of what made us happy were things that adults couldn’t understand. We’d turn on each other sometimes, but nothing was unforgivable and our experiences together were indelible.

We’d share secrets that no one else could understand. We did the best we could to educate one another about the mysteries of sex. We confessed about liking certain cartoons and toys that we probably should have given up long ago if we were truly cool. We admitted to things our parents and siblings had done to make us feel inadequate.

As much as it frustrated me to be on the outside looking in as I tried to get to know my father, I was glad he was there. He would get up from the table every night and carry his dishes into the kitchen. He made sure that everything in the pantry was grouped together in a logical way. I could count on his shoes being on the bottom step of the staircase and his coat hanging on the banister. I counted on these routines to bring me comfort and stability. He had a calm about him which I didn’t understand, but it made my home more livable. It had not quite been fully alive when I was living there alone.