Friday, March 29, 2024
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After Two Years, a Father-Son Reunion

Don’t kill Dad.

That’s what Sylvie told Ethan on the eve of my trip to Utah.

It wasn’t out-and-out patricide my daughter was worried about, but an excess of derring-do. The centerpiece of our last father-son outing was the steep, narrow trail to Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park – the scariest hike I’ve ever done. This time we decided to rent the old man a mountain bike. (This is called foreshadowing.)

I hadn’t seen my son in two years. We had texted, emailed, talked on the phone and occasionally Zoomed. As we all know, it isn’t the same and it isn’t enough. 

That’s especially true for me and Ethan. We’re at our best when we’re out-of-doors.

It was pouring when I flew into Salt Lake City on Friday night and still pouring when we woke up on Saturday morning. Snow flecked the Wasatch Mountains. As we packed the truck, bought our grub (food becomes grub when you’re camping) and picked up the mountain bike, I was cold for the first time since last spring. I fretted that I should have come sooner, and for longer.

But 230 miles south, in Capitol Reef National Park, the sun was shining and the air was cool, not cold. At least until nightfall.

Capitol Reef is one of southern Utah’s geological marvels – all red rocks, sheer canyons, stone arches and freestanding rock towers that look like they’ve been there a million years and are about to fall down any second.

We took a short hike, then scouted out a primitive – as in, no water, no facilities — patch of high desert just outside the park on BLM land. Dinner, I’m mildly ashamed to say, was canned chili mixed with boxed mac-and-cheese. Yummy in a gross sort of way. 

Then we turned to the serious business of learning how to be a father and son as two adults. We haven’t had much practice, living where we do. Our equipment was a campfire, a chocolate bar and something we couldn’t share when I was the grownup and Ethan was the kid — a 750-ml bottle of bourbon. 

By this point, we had put on our long underwear, our ski socks, our puffy jackets and our watch caps. Temps were expected to drop into the 30s. A crescent moon rose and quickly set, the stars we never see in town reminding us what the night sky is supposed to look like.

We reminisced a lot about play: wiffleball in the backyard, demolition derby in his bedroom, carousing at bedtime when I was supposed to be settling him down with a book.

Then there was the difficult time when his mom and I split up, teenage Ethan making the best of the situation by working the two-household system: partying at my house when I was out, doing the same at his mom’s when she was out. 

Now the secrets can be told. There were a handful of times when I caught him sneaking out of the house or back into the house. He told me about a few more. 

The time he stole my cross-country skis, tried to make his way across town to a friend’s, gave up, hid the skis in the snow, then retrieved them on the way home. The time, when I was out of town, that a couple of his friends slept in my bed, which explains the lighter I found in the bed when I got home.  

My advice to parents of teenage boys: Tell yourself that in 10 years, assuming the lad makes it that far, all the stories will be funny.

I filled in some of the gaps in my own story that Ethan hadn’t heard or hadn’t absorbed the first time he heard them. In addition to the genetic stuff, we have one other thing in common: Each of us was the first boy after two girls. 

“It’s like I have three moms,” Ethan once complained to me.

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I know exactly.”

We also talked about his coming-of-age struggles, but those are too fresh to divulge. 

Each of us had worried, a little, that our conversation would be stilted, so we were tickled to see that we had lasted around the campfire in the high desert wind until 10:30, talking all the while. 

Next morning, after breakfast, we took off on the mountain bikes, Ethan going airborne, me playing it safe, at first, then, gaining confidence, coasting down a steep and rocky hill until, panicked by my speed and a steep ledge, I pumped the brakes too hard and went airborne without the bike.

“I’m OK!” I announced as I dusted myself off. My face had just grazed the ground, leaving me with the tiniest of scrapes. No blood. But my right thigh was deeply bruised and I’ve been hobbling since. 

Not dead, though. 

And no regrets.

We were never quite estranged, Ethan and I, but now we are closer than we’ve been since those long-ago wiffleball games and mini-demolition derbies.