Father's Day

My father was an engineer on the lake freighters. In the shipping season he was gone for weeks at a time, down the lakes and back, and when he called from the locks at Sault Ste. Marie my mother would hand me the phone and I'd hear the engines behind him. He said I talked too fast. I said he talked too slow. We were both right.

He'd come home smelling of diesel and coffee, sleep for most of a day, and then take me down to the canal to watch the boats come in under the bridge. He could tell you which one was which from a mile out. I never learned how.

He died in September of my third year of college. It's been almost thirteen years, and I still think of something to tell him most weeks.

Today I walked down to the water and watched a container ship go out. It was the wrong water and the wrong kind of ship. It helped anyway.