Once a father...

I have a memory. I couldn't have been more than three or four years old. For two weeks every summer, my father would rent a cabin on a lake that was at once inviting and frightening because, though beautiful, it was inhabited by crayfish. The only person who could convince me to go into the water was my father-and even then, only riding on his shoulders. I thought him all the braver because my mother was terrified. Not of the crayfish, but because my father didn't know how to swim. He would always take me across to an island that was perhaps 100 or 150 steps off shore-"out to sea," as my mother would say. In some places, the water would come up to just below his nose. My mother would yell, "Are you crazy, Lucien?" Thus, my father's silent affection for me went right up to his nose: if he opened his mouth, he was dead-and so was I! Under the circumstances, I was lucky my father didn't talk much.

And yet, with every crossing, he saved my life. But, in saving my life, didn't he also save his own? Is it not also a father's job to save his own life, to prolong it and give it meaning, to know both its limitations and the dizzying highs of unconditional love? Because fatherhood is also this: an intense love for one's child and a never-ending vertigo.

Article sourced from a publication from the Public Health Agency of Canada