The Ocean Between Us

I never saw it coming.

Twelve years.

A dozen sounds smaller.
A carton of eggs.
A thing you carry home
without thinking.

But twelve years
is long enough
for a boy to become a man
somewhere beyond your reach.

A moment ago,
or what feels like a moment,
we were on the beach.

I was teaching you
how to fly a kite.

Hold the string.
Feel the pull.
Don’t fight the wind too much.

That was the lesson,
though I did not know it.

Then came the other lessons.

Diabetes.
Needles.
Medicine.
Fear.

The long names
people give to pain
when pain has taken up
too much room in the house.

Anxiety.
Depression.

The ills of the age,
yes,
but also the ills of one boy,
one father,
one family trying
not to break.

I taught you to ride a bike.

I watched you in Scouts,
in Primary,
in quorums,
in all the rooms
where boys are told
they are becoming men.

And time,
being time,
did not stop
to ask permission.

Thirty years
since that day
on the beach.

Thirty years
since the kite rose
like a small white prayer
over the water.

Then the blow in the night.

Then silence.

Before the silence,

there was a car.
There was money.
There was tuition.

There were checks written,
calls made,
doors opened,
because that is what a father does.

Or what I thought
a father does.

He gives what he has.
He gives what he can.
He gives even when
what is needed
is something he does not have.

I could not change myself.

That is the part
I still do not know
how to say.

I could not change myself,
let alone you.

So I stood there
with my hands full
of love and failure,
and watched you go.

Now I sail on.

Not bravely.

Not cleanly.

Only because the tide
keeps taking me.

And somewhere behind me,
or ahead of me,
or across from me
in a country I cannot reach,
you are there.

My son.

The boy on the beach.

The man beyond the sound
of my voice.

And twelve years
have become an ocean.