Parenthood: A Shipwreck of Memories

I’m at our house on Prince Edward Island, and yesterday morning I went down to the beach for a run. It’s a beautiful beach, one you access by a red dirt road. The sand is the singing sort. It’s a joy to run here at low tide when the beach is wide and flat, with tide pools that make you feel ten years old again as you splash through them.

This morning I was feeling energetic, maintaining a decent (for me) pace, and feeling good about life in general. I’m here with a friend on a writing retreat and we have similar rhythms; we work toward pesky book deadlines and take beach breaks, share our writing, and live in t-shirts and sweatpants. So I was all smiles, even while running and panting, until I saw the shipwreck.

I mean that literally: it’s an actual shipwreck, the remains of which I have observed at low tide on this beach since my youngest son was eleven years old. That’s the year we bought this house, the year we found the shipwreck together; he’s twenty-six now. Aidan and I made up stories about pirates and mermaids as we examined the remains together. We talked about the engine and the wood, how the ship was made, and what could have caused it to sink and run aground. Every day at low tide, for many summers, Aidan wanted to walk to the shipwreck, and whenever we brought his friends to the island, that was often the first thing he wanted to show them.

Now, seeing the shipwreck at low tide, and spotting another young boy examining it with his mother, the two of them squatting in the sand, heads close together as they imagine what brought this lichen-covered vessel with its rusty engine to our beach, memories clamor to be seen and heard. Aidan hasn’t come to the island with me in years, nor have my other adult children.

I keep running past the shipwreck to banish the memories, but of course that’s impossible. That is the joy and the grief of parenthood, isn’t it? We bring children into the world and devote ourselves to giving them the love, knowledge, and dreams we believe will lead them into a world where they will thrive and be better people than we are. My children are, thankfully, doing just that, but at times it’s a painful pleasure to see them live so independently. A few years ago, I traveled to Alaska to visit my daughter, who was a forester there at the time, and she packed our things for a hike, including homemade granola bars and bear spray. It was clear to me then that our roles had reversed: this curly-headed beautiful creature, who I once made hold my hand while crossing the street, was taking care of me in a vast, bear-infested wilderness. Yet still I can feel that little phantom hand in mine.

My oldest son is now in his thirties and married, with a successful career and a passion for music and writing. He was a peaceful child, observant early on. When he was a toddler I’d sometimes bring him to the library to do research and spread a blanket at my feet with toys. He’d sit there for as long as I wanted to write, playing and entertaining himself. A few weeks ago, this son and I met at a Boston WeWork space to hang out and work on our separate writing projects. At one point I turned to him and saw not his bearded, Brooklyn-dwelling self, but the bald and quizzical baby he once was, flipping through cloth books long before he could read. That, too, was a joyful memory that brought the sharp sting of time passing.

Recently, I asked a young friend how he felt about being a father himself now that he had a baby. He thought for a minute and said, “I am no longer the main protagonist of my own story.”

This is true for a time. When children are young, good parents put them first in most things. But then the children leave and you are left with the old art portfolios from third grade, bins of Legos and stuffed toys, base amps that work, and forgotten hoodies. Your story is your own again, as you continue working in your often empty house or making vacation plans that no longer involve booking multiple hotel rooms. It is a new sort of freedom, one you treasure because it’s a novelty. Yet there is this thing you carry, this box or suitcase or shipwreck of memories, of the person you were when the children were young, as well as the person you were before parenthood and the person you are now. It’s a many-layered self, and sometimes you wish you could go back in time, peel back some of those layers, and have your children hold your hand one more time when you cross the street because you didn’t realize that last time was, in fact, the last.

I am still running on our beach as I think about this, until eventually I turn around at the Basin Head bridge where my children, as teens, used to jump off into the river below. As I run back, a man jogs toward me. He’s about my oldest son’s age, bearded, too, and for a moment my heart leaps.

Then the man gives me a “V” sign with his fingers, and I do the same to him in return, acknowledging that, by running, we are accomplishing something, achieving a small victory by moving our bodies through space and time, even as we are awash with memories we can’t, and shouldn’t, try to outrun.