Tuesday, December 10, 2024
You cannot take a picture of a father's love for his son.
Nor can you capture a son's love for his father with any instrument or device created by the hands of humans.
And you know this.
And you try, anyway.
And it is Kai's phone which is the instrument or device created by the hands of humans, which has no prayer of capturing that which will forever elude all attempts to do so.
And you have marked the decades of your lives together on a Great Clock that ticks with a slowness which defies comprehension.
It is a Great Clock in the sky, when, every 20 years, the greater bright light of Jupiter overtakes the lesser bright light of Saturn as they journey around the sun.
And Kai has, so far, seen the Great Clock tick exactly three times over the full course of his life. The first tick came when he was a very small child, only three years old at the time, and though he was so very very small, his eyes already shown clearly with a penetrating light that many adults never seem to evidence, and it was dark, and we were out by Brevard Avenue, and I pointed to the Great Clock in the sky, with the Greater and Lesser bright lights hanging conjunct, motionless above our heads, and I told him of how slowly the Clock will tick, and how it will mark the Great Divisions of his life, and he was oh so very very small. And new.
And he understood.
And he remembered.
Perfectly.
And as my own father would take me to the same shore in Florida when I was small, I would take him to Playalinda, and together we would be immersed in a world in which we, together, were still growing. And the sea, and the sand, and the palmettos, and the sky, and the distant Towers of Canaveral, from where people once flew to the moon, wove themselves deeply into the fabric of our lives, and became as part of us, even as we became part of them, and the Clock...
Ticked.
Slowly.
Slowly.
And he lives at a terrible distance, but the bond grows stronger anyway, and a different clock, which ticks much faster, but still ticks...
Slowly.
Brings him back to me, if only for a few days.
And we returned to our home by the sea and the sand and the palmettos and the sky and the Towers of Canaveral, once again, because the bond is vastly stronger than the terrible distance, and here again we find ourselves.
And the sky wishes to let us know it understands, and offers us a gift the like of which only the two of us together resonate with properly, and it shows us just a bit of a parhelic arc, with a pair of brilliant sundogs, one on either side of the lowering sun, shining with a penetrating light and color, and above, a rainbow in the most uncanny place imaginable, nearly straight overhead, a circumzenithal arc, and it too is a clock, ticking with unimaginable slowness, but it ticks erratically, and it reminds us both instantly of another day, in another place, when Kai was young, and he espied it first and came running to me to tell me, so that I too could marvel at its uncanny beauty before its too-brief life was extinguished forever, and the two of us together stopped, and gave it the full time and consideration which it was so worthy of...
...while it lasted...
...and we remembered.
Together.
And today, again...
We remember...
Together.
And then, in the far distance, Kai, once again, espies it first, and draws my attention to the tiny, but unmistakable, black shape of the Iwa Bird, lone, circling slowly above the horizon, and as it circled, it even more slowly came our way, unerringly.
And Iwa is a Hawaiian word, as is Kai's given name, and the still waters of Kai run deep, and the thief that is the Iwa Bird is a sign that he will be taken away from me, once again, to a terrible distance, until the Clock that is our Bond ticks yet again.
But the Iwa Bird is also the sign of unseen land, and for those beyond the horizon on a trackless journey at sea, it was a wayfinder and a guide, and a Sign of Home, and it can also be seen in the sky at night as 'Iwakeli'i, opposite the North Star from the Big Dipper, arched wings outstretched, and there in the sky it was, directly above the two of us, alone.
Telling us of a terrible distance...
...and Home.
And the sea and the sand and the palmettos and the sky and the Towers of Canaveral and the Iwa Bird spoke to us.
And we listened.
And then we were gone.
You cannot take a picture of a father's love for his son.
Nor can you capture a son's love for his father with any instrument or device created by the hands of humans.
And you know this.
And you try, anyway.
And it is Kai's phone which is the instrument or device created by the hands of humans, which has no prayer of capturing that which will forever elude all attempts to do so.
And you have marked the decades of your lives together on a Great Clock that ticks with a slowness which defies comprehension.
It is a Great Clock in the sky, when, every 20 years, the greater bright light of Jupiter overtakes the lesser bright light of Saturn as they journey around the sun.
And Kai has, so far, seen the Great Clock tick exactly three times over the full course of his life. The first tick came when he was a very small child, only three years old at the time, and though he was so very very small, his eyes already shown clearly with a penetrating light that many adults never seem to evidence, and it was dark, and we were out by Brevard Avenue, and I pointed to the Great Clock in the sky, with the Greater and Lesser bright lights hanging conjunct, motionless above our heads, and I told him of how slowly the Clock will tick, and how it will mark the Great Divisions of his life, and he was oh so very very small. And new.
And he understood.
And he remembered.
Perfectly.
And as my own father would take me to the same shore in Florida when I was small, I would take him to Playalinda, and together we would be immersed in a world in which we, together, were still growing. And the sea, and the sand, and the palmettos, and the sky, and the distant Towers of Canaveral, from where people once flew to the moon, wove themselves deeply into the fabric of our lives, and became as part of us, even as we became part of them, and the Clock...
Ticked.
Slowly.
Slowly.
And he lives at a terrible distance, but the bond grows stronger anyway, and a different clock, which ticks much faster, but still ticks...
Slowly.
Brings him back to me, if only for a few days.
And we returned to our home by the sea and the sand and the palmettos and the sky and the Towers of Canaveral, once again, because the bond is vastly stronger than the terrible distance, and here again we find ourselves.
And the sky wishes to let us know it understands, and offers us a gift the like of which only the two of us together resonate with properly, and it shows us just a bit of a parhelic arc, with a pair of brilliant sundogs, one on either side of the lowering sun, shining with a penetrating light and color, and above, a rainbow in the most uncanny place imaginable, nearly straight overhead, a circumzenithal arc, and it too is a clock, ticking with unimaginable slowness, but it ticks erratically, and it reminds us both instantly of another day, in another place, when Kai was young, and he espied it first and came running to me to tell me, so that I too could marvel at its uncanny beauty before its too-brief life was extinguished forever, and the two of us together stopped, and gave it the full time and consideration which it was so worthy of...
...while it lasted...
...and we remembered.
Together.
And today, again...
We remember...
Together.
And then, in the far distance, Kai, once again, espies it first, and draws my attention to the tiny, but unmistakable, black shape of the Iwa Bird, lone, circling slowly above the horizon, and as it circled, it even more slowly came our way, unerringly.
And Iwa is a Hawaiian word, as is Kai's given name, and the still waters of Kai run deep, and the thief that is the Iwa Bird is a sign that he will be taken away from me, once again, to a terrible distance, until the Clock that is our Bond ticks yet again.
But the Iwa Bird is also the sign of unseen land, and for those beyond the horizon on a trackless journey at sea, it was a wayfinder and a guide, and a Sign of Home, and it can also be seen in the sky at night as 'Iwakeli'i, opposite the North Star from the Big Dipper, arched wings outstretched, and there in the sky it was, directly above the two of us, alone.
Telling us of a terrible distance...
...and Home.
And the sea and the sand and the palmettos and the sky and the Towers of Canaveral and the Iwa Bird spoke to us.
And we listened.
And then we were gone.
