by Patrick Caneday

Created on: June 13, 2009   Last Updated: June 18, 2009

I was two when he left. When I became a father and my daughter turned two, I looked at her and tried to imagine how it would feel to walk away from her. The thought made me shudder, wanting to wake myself from a bad dream.

The childhood memories I have of my father are a patchwork of contractually obligated visits - one weekend per month, two weeks in the summer - and a phone call on holidays or birthdays; vignettes of time, in which I was to suck the marrow out of the father-son relationship as quickly as possible before returning home to the protective wings of my mother hen.

He and his new wife moved on to various towns across the state. Each a step farther away from the four children left behind. The farther away they went, the more infrequent our visits became.

I loved him and loved visiting him, though he was half stranger, half parent. I knew that he loved me too, but I felt it in a less intimate way then. It was an unfamiliar love. My favorite place to visit him was Catalina Island. I'd take the sea plane over and the pilot would let me sit in the cockpit and watch the ocean rise to meet us as we descended into Avalon.

His house was up a short hill just out of the main village. One day walking up that hill he stopped, looked over a fence and whistled down into the darkness of a small eucalyptus shaded valley. He whistled a short call and from nowhere came the response. An unseen myna bird called back, note for note, mysterious and pure. He smiled and we walked on.

I tried to get that myna bird to whistle back to me every time I walked up that hill. I don't recall ever hearing it's song back.

As the youngest amongst my siblings, I was the lucky one. Each has a story to tell about their memories of our father. But with no real memorable experience of my father before the divorce, I didn't know what I was missing. You can't crave candy if you don't know what it tastes like. I thought it was weird when the fathers of other kids showed up to cub scout events, tee ball and football games. I thought every boy learned how to play catch with his mom.

Once my father discovered that I liked camping, fishing and the outdoors like him, he did his best to teach me all he knew of these things in our brief visits. It's these moments in our shared passion that are most dear to me. How to pitch a tent, start a campfire, tie a fishing knot or dress a freshly caught trout. He taught me the peace of nature.

Summer visits to his house were both comforting and uncomfortable.

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