There is a short story by Ernest Hemingway, “Fathers and Sons,” that is one of my most-favorites ever read. Growing up, there was a book of his short stories—The Finca Vigia Edition—that I would check out again and again from our local library to read and reread the stories shared within.
I have my own copy now, and the binding is broken and pages are loose from the number of times I’ve gone back to this story again.
Its first paragraph is description of scene, and there is a passage on a cut bank beside a road “red dirt sliced cleanly away” that makes me think of history returned to surface in erosion and exposure by movements and change.
I’ve thought of the story, and the “red dirt sliced cleanly away”—old memories—for a few weeks now, never having taken the time to write.
My oldest son is running cross country this fall. It’s something he’s never done but wanted to try, and as a father I want to encourage him in his own ambitions, not press upon or relive my own through him.
Four times a week, all summer long, I dropped him off for his morning runs. Growing up, my 6:00 AMs were weight rooms and football. His were morning runs through town.
One morning, he ran six miles. It was the furthest he’d ever ran. He told me what they were doing, and he told me that practice might be longer than most, and he didn’t know how long it would take some of the team to finish—when he really meant and spoke of his own unknowns.
When I returned to pick him up, he was not back; but I saw him soon after, finishing and completing his run in stride.
I was proud of him for pushing himself, for learning something new, of a challenge, he could do, even if it took a little while, as most challenges do.
He is growing into his body. He is growing into himself. Learning his friends, what he likes, and what he doesn’t.
He is a freshman this year, has outgrown me in size and maybe kindness, and if so to both, I pray he doesn’t slow down or make himself small in either.
There is another lesson and learning and discovery he’s learned in his run—one we all learn in our own time, in our own way, through our own means; whose story and experience and live are only ours and unique—as common and universal as it may be.
There is a girl he likes, and she runs too. Maybe all summer, he’s been chasing her—though it didn’t start that way.
She has brown hair, brown eyes, and she is nice; and it’s this that matters most.
Driving home, my son speaks of her.
“I talked to —,” my son shares.
I smile, “that’s awesome!” I respond, excited for him and eager to listen.
I think of conversations we’ve held on our morning car rides to and from. There was the morning he had a discernment that maybe she liked him too. He told of a brief exchange of words—one begun by her—and I asked, “Are any other girls talking to you?” “No.” Well then that’s a good start of an idea!” I asked him further, when they spoke, “Was she smiling?” “Yes.” “Were you smiling?” “Yes.” “Did she laugh?” “Yes.” “Did you laugh?” “Yes.” “All good signs!” I encouraged that day.
We continue driving home “under the heavy of trees of the small town that are a part of your heart if it is your town and you have walked under them, but that are only too heavy, that shut out the sun and that dampen the houses for a stranger; out past the last house and onto the highway that rose and fell straight away ahead with banks of red dirt sliced cleanly away and the second-growth timber on both sides. It was…the middle of fall and all of this country was good to drive through and to see.”[i]
I think of the story, remembering my own high school years. Junior year and an early social after a football game—or for something else I can’t remember—when a girl that came up to me, friendly and with smile, that waved once to me over summer as if she knew me, but I had no idea of her name—only that she seemed nice.
She came up to me and I saw her close, personal in nearness of space, and her smile brought my own to answer. She was just as friendly as she appeared in summer. She began the conversation whose words I never seemed to find.
She helped me through my shyness and in the year to come, what it was to care for another, a stranger that became more than a friend even if only for a season.
She ran cross country. Her hair was brown hair, but her eyes were green; and she was nice—this, I remember most.
I say no more as my son speaks on. I only listen—part in the present, part in the past—as we drive on “under the heavy of trees of the small town that are a part of your heart if it is your town and you have walked under them, but that are only too heavy, that shut out the sun and that dampen the houses for a stranger; out past the last house and onto the highway that rose and fell straight away ahead with banks of red dirt sliced cleanly away and the second-growth timber on both sides. It was…the middle of fall and all of this country was good to drive through and to see.”
[i] Hemingway, Ernest. “Fathers and Sons.”