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, 

My Father's Ocean

 “My soul is full of longing for the secret of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean

sends a thrilling pulse through me.”    ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My dad loved the ocean. Wilder the better. He would stand  at the point at Gordon Beach, out at Sooke, B.C., in all sorts of weather. He would just stand and watch.I always wondered what he was watching. Even in those last few months, he would stand and not move. I imagined he was looking for pirate ships.

 In the early 1960's, my uncle would stay at our rustic, beat up  old cabin, thru the winter months, to escape the harsh Saskatchewan winters.  This huge , hollowed out tree was my jungle gym, so to speak. It was  an ocean full of surprises. One year I saw a grey whale circling the bay.

 My mother enjoyed standing in the surf, waiting for her picture to be taken. The surf would crackle and pop over stones making horrific noises. She would stand in the ocean till she was soaked. Waiting for someone to take her picture.

 My aunt was visiting one day. She climbed up on the old hollow log.  Then she couldn't get down. They got a ladder for her. She was worried about the tide. 

 When I was very little, I would run away from the sea. They always put me in that horrible brown snow suit. Ugh. How I hated that thing. Maybe I was really running away from it. 

One of my favourite

things to do was to stand on our  broken down stump. Stand and watch the ocean. I loved having my dad there. We would watch. Never really said anything. Just stood and watched. We did that day in, and day out. 

 Then there was the day, I sat at the edge of the ocean. It crashed and bashed around me. I think I  screamed at it. I didn't like it. My dad sat on a log. Again he didn't say much. He was patient.

 But I DID like the old telephone pole. Whenever we left the beach to head for home I would listen for the hum  of the wind.  Years later, many moons later, I still listened with my ear to the weathered wood, and the hum would always be the same one. It never changed. The same comforting sound.

 In my more shining moments, my mother ( her feet always stuck in the ocean), would haul me out over  the water. And on cue, I would scream. And scream. Terrified  the brewing water would boil over,  and swallow me up like a sea serpent.

 Many days . Many weeks. Many years . We would come and go. My dad created a story about this place. He called it "Johnny Fish". It was about a Selkie   ( A Selkie is  a fairy who takes on the form of a seal), with the aid of a  special white cloak. 

 With this cloak, the Selkie  could swim with the fishes and the seals, and have tea under the water with the king and Queen of the mer people.  At the end of the visit , the Selkie returned to the shore to live with her human parents. But the fairy folk  continued to watch over them . My favourite part was making up what sort of things they would have underwater: seaweed sandwiches, Sea cucumber croquettes, and Jelly Fish pudding......

 It was of course, a story for and about me. Supposed to make me less afraid of the water. It was always our story. And when my father died, it was still our story. But I shared it with my own children. And then the story  belonged to all of us. 

 When my father died, my mother took to sitting on the cabin deck. She would look out to sea.She would watch. Like my father watched.

 She would take me to the stump. She would stand and watch. Listen to the wind. I never wondered what she was watching for. I always knew .

 The ocean was a bright moment for all those years . As long as  sea serpents never  popped up, I was fine. I would catch my dad looking out to sea.  I thought he was looking for serpents.

   Sooke had  a magic quality. A  place where there was no phone, no electricity, not even a working bathroom. The smell of lye coming from the outhouse was a constant.

 It was one of the last things my mother would clean before  heading for home. My dad would make seats and tables out of log stumps.

  The parents always trying to get me to paddle in the salty brine. And me. Struggling and Squirming my way out of it. Except when I stood with my father , at that silly old stump, and watched for pirate ships, or Johnny Fish, and the fairy folk. We would listen to the seething wind and the crush of the waves. My father would be silent. Always watching. And I with him.

 "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking."― John Masefield, Sea Fever: Selected Poems