MORNING SERIAL

SO I calmed myself, trying to reassure. But to myself I thought: perhaps I’m not the father my father was, just as this place is not quite the place it was. I had never seen my father act like this. He always seemed calm and self-assured, always knowing just what to say and do, at least while I was very young. The very idea of packing waterproof trousers for a simple walk on the mountain would have struck him as amusing.

A wave of mournfulness swept over me and I saw: we cannot have it back, any of it. We might see it in a dream, or linger on a memory of it, but the thing itself is gone. Gone utterly. I wondered then if there were any real point in this, in dragging my sons on a tour of the ruins of my childhood, the ruins of old love; my love for this place, my love for my father, now made one-sided by death. I could not ever recreate that day my father had made for me, no matter how hard I tried, or how often, because I was not him.

What had his thoughts been, I wondered, as he looked at his son, playing on this mountain top more than forty years ago? Had he been reliving old memories that day too? It was obvious he had been this way before, after all.

But he had not spoken of his memories when we had passed this way together. He had simply shown me the view beyond the valley and how best to listen to the singing of the larks. And so I made a memory of my very own, fresh that day.

The thing itself is gone. But it will be remade. Always a little different, but containing within itself the same truth. The truth now seen through our children’s eyes.

But for me – for myself alone – if I could relive just one day of all the days of my childhood, it would be that day. The day my father showed me the breadth of the earth, the immensity of the sky, and how best to hear the skylark’s song.