I COULD GIVE HIM SONG........a short story about Sooke and Easter

 "There will be stars over the place forever; though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost, every time the earth circles her orbit. Two stars will reach their zenith. Stillness will be deep. There will be stars over the place forever, while we sleep......" 
                                  -Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

 My dad loved to stand on the logs at Sooke. Teetering on the salty slime. Feel  wind howl and the waves pound. Churning. Bubbling. He FELT something at the ocean.

It was home away from home.  Easter was the first time of the year when we would drive an hour's drive to the cabin. That old rustic cabin, perched on the corner  of rocks and logs too precarious to believe.

 I hated the sound of the water smashing against rocks. That awful sucking noise, slobbering up over the beach made me think of gigantic squid squooshing their way up to get me.

 My mother loved it there. She would stand in the surf to get her photo . Turn her head just so. Close her eyes just so.  Feel the spray. Be at peace.

 Easter, Winter, Summer, Fall. It stood and never wavered. We were there. Just to stay for a day, or an afternoon, or a couple of days. Just to be there. Away from everything. Away from the phone, electricity, people. Just the ocean.

 Massive logs, ponderous rocks. My father loved it. Early Spring, close to easter, was his favourite time. I hated the rocks and the ocean,and the smell of seaweed....And yet he always pulled me down to the shore. And I would scream like a banshee. That horrible brown rain suit they made me wear......

 Waves that crashed and scared me. My dad tossing me in the water. My childish  screaming over  the giant squid that I figured was going to get me.

 He lived for Sooke. It was his one place he could  feel alive. Those last years he had. Those last years we had. But didn't really accept.

 Years before my Mother  and father travelled to California one year. They loved it. But he missed Sooke.  They never went south again. Instead they bought property on the water at Sooke, Gordon Beach, Vancouver island, and had a cabin built.

 Nothing fancy, my Dad said. Just something with four walls. Some windows. An outhouse. Gotta have an outhouse. It smelled of lye and I was sure there were bats hanging above.  My mother insisted on a  Franklin stove to heat it on those cold days.She would cook steak and potatoes and we'd sit in the corner seats and watch the sea.

 My dad's friends came all the way from Campbell River to build it that one summer. Hot days full of the smell of sawdust, gingerale, coffee, and good food  my mother cooked for them on a camp stove.

 I remember  one of the workers saying it was like being on Gilligan's Island........

 My Father knew his time was limited. A couple of years maybe. He made it count. He never looked back.

 We would stand and look for pirate ships. And giant squid. He never said much.I hardly remember his voice now. But I remember those days at Sooke. We would just stand and look out.He made sure I would not fall. Made sure I was safe. 

 I'd watch him wander into giant squid infested ( or so I thought) surf. I remember how he  stood there, looking down at his toes.  It was chilly. But he still waded in. Then he started jumping around yelling to me that the squid were eating him. Funny.Not.

 My mother  liked to enter the local easter Bonnet contest. One year she won. Mostly cause she had made her own dress to go with her bonnet. She brought  her bonnet to Sooke that last year or two. Wore it on her head to sit on the logs.  Then she let me wear it .

 But for my dad it was the surf, and the tempest that  never disappointed. And the squids and big fish that liked to eat the squid. Or me.

 Then one year he was gone. He  who had loved Sooke and it's world that  he longed for. He was gone. I would listen at  telephone poles  like he taught me. Listened to hear his voice in the wind.  And it was Easter again. 

 I learned to love the ocean because of him. And there are times I can still see him jumping up and down in the shoreline. Daring those awful Giant Squid to come and get him.  Then laughing. And laughing.......... 

 "I asked the heaven of stars what I should give. I could give Him song....." -Sara Teasdale

Photographs 2019, 1960's,