Dispatches from the County XII: Sandbanks

My daughter takes off her shoes and socks to walk barefoot on the high part of the white sand.

Daddy you should do it. She keeps pestering me, as we walk the full length of the famous Ontario beach, almost a half hour just one way. My daughter keeps at it. How amazing it is. I try to explain. I have walked barefoot on a beach before.

On the way back I finally capitulate. She’s been right all along of course. Bare feet on the cool sand. I tell her so and we hold hands to reaffirm our shared experience, shoes and socks in our free hands. She is nine, my daughter is. She still very much enjoys holding her daddy’s hand. Time is precious, I think, every time she does. Adolescence too close for comfort. I am aware.

I take her by the hand down to the water, thinking of my late mother as I always do in such places. My mom grew up on the Indian Ocean in South Africa. In my childhood water played a central role in almost every car vacation my family ever took. For that reason or simply because a lake is like a forest is like a mountain: it brings something out of me. Truths I won’t candy-coat. Losses I have too recently endured. When I come out here, to face the water, I say to my daughter, I’m not afraid of death. We’re all part of something, part of this.

My daughter nods solemnly. She likes when I tell her these adult truths. Then she pulls me, C’mon daddy, back up to the high part of the beach where there are few shells and the sand is softest. Pulls me back to where time remains precious. And I’ve never felt luckier to be a dad.