sketchbook stories: ebb & flow

set adrift on memory bliss

A perfectly imagined August afternoon. Fishing pole, a dog, a boy. The river hot and muddy and dank. No cares, no troubles. The moment, in its tranquil grace, slipping through his fingers, awash in the rivulets of memory.

This was, of course, before he had befriended the sea, learned to sail, strapped the oxygen tank to his wetsuit, explored the ocean depths. Before wanderlust struck his life like a lightning bolt, before he left and came back, then left again. Before he stoked the fire in the woodstove that last time. Before he exited his first adult life, stage left.

Illustration by my grandfather, Edward Shenton, from The Color of the Country, a novel written by my grandmother, Barbara Webster; the boy above is my father.

“The happy memories you took for granted, but the heart-breaking ones bit deeper; they became part of the living ties which bound you to those you loved.”

—Barbara Webster, The Color of The Country

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