EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
KID
QUIPS
During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
|
||||
|
The water, brackish and green, lapped up against my window. I felt the car rolling backward, and I watched the sky disappear. I expected to see seahorses down there, and perhaps I did, since I've been repeatedly told that this was only a childhood daydream, and in childhood daydreams, theoretically at least, anything ought to be possible. Stubbornly, though - because I am stubborn about nothing so much as my illusions - I choose to believe the whole thing was real: that my father really did back the old tan Ford into the lake with me in the back seat, and that I really did get a glimpse of the grubby undersea, which, if you know anything about Southern Nevada's Lake Mead, could not possibly have any seahorses. After repeated cross-examination of my parents, I can certify one thing as true: When I was 3 or 4, my father really did put a car into reverse and drive it into the lake. The story, which makes perfect sense, if you're interested in that sort of thing, is that our small powerboat (named by my sister, with a '70s consciousness that becomes more appealing as the years go by, "Peace Chief") was hitched to the back of the Ford, and my father was supposed to be backing it, and not the car itself, into the lake. Apparently, my father went too far. The official story also includes this salient bit of information: I was, at the time, not in the car, but already in the boat. Well, hooray for the official story. But if I was in the boat that day, I do not, as the politicians say, have any recollection of it. Or, more to the point, I have no recollection of not being in the car. When I was very young, I loved the lake, the hot sand, the cool smooth shallow-water rocks that bruised my bare feet. I loved the dock, which seemed always to sway and squeak. I loved the little snack shop there. I loved the tubes of Ghirardelli Flicks I bought at the little snack shop. I kept those tubes long after their contents had been devoured. I sniffed the tubes while sitting in a red vinyl seat as the boat zipped along. I brought the tubes home and sniffed them and smelled not only chocolate, but the lake itself. All of this is true; why shouldn't my undersea voyage be true, too? When I was 5 or 6, my father sold the boat and my brother and sister started playing tennis and we never went to the lake anymore. As for the tan Ford, dad somehow got it out of the water. He parked it in the sun. It dried out. Greg Blake Miller writes from Las Vegas. For Letters: ocfamily.com |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This ArticleSEARCH THE SITE
