![]() ![]() He’s been complaining-who can blame him-and finally he sits down on somebody’s front stoop to pull off the skates, and goes on, snow or no snow, in his socks. The narrow brick sidewalk is snowy in places, and the going is harder for Andy than it is for me, because he’s wearing ice skates. ![]() Here we are, instead, on a frigid December day in 1929, walking up a steep stretch of Pinckney Street, on Beacon Hill, in Boston. What’s impossible to write down, soon afterward, is a conversation that comes easily. What were we talking about, just now? We were close for almost sixty years, and you’d think that a little back-and-forth-something more than a joke or part of an anecdote-would survive, but no. One hand is holding a cigarette tentatively-he’ll smoke it halfway down and then stub it out-and he turns in his chair to put his Martini back on the Swedish side table to his right. I see his plaid button-down shirt and tweed jacket, and his good evening moccasins. In my mind, this is at his place in North Brooklin, Maine, and he’s almost still around. White died in 1985-twenty years ago, come October-and by “missing” I don’t mean yearning for him so much as not being able to keep hold of him for a bit of conversation or even a tone of voice. I can hear the sound of that gray door-the steps there lead down into the fragrant connecting woodshed-as the lift-latch clicks shut. White releases his ego by realizing that he himself is inconsequential.Lately I have been missing my stepfather, Andy White, who keeps excusing himself while he steps out of the room to get something from his study or heads out the back kitchen door, on his way to the barn again. In spite of the increasing amounts of technology, his son still has the same experiences that he had when he was a boy – sneaking out in the morning, being amused by the dragonflies. White realizes that although human lives are by themselves transient and insignificant, experiences are immortal. ![]() I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment.Īs he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death. White references this in the final lines: He suddenly realizes how death is so close, because he is now the father and not the son. I felt dizzy and didn't know which rod I was at the end of. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. The author compares the time he went fishing with his dad and how he's fishing now with his son: The memory balances the theme of technology, suggesting that certain kinds of technology, if a person can "get close to it spiritually," are able to become almost a natural part of one's self. This could suggest that technology is impure or damaging, except that the same paragraph contains a lengthy reminiscence in which White rhapsodizes about his boyhood affection for an old one-cylinder engine. Although White sees the lake as having remained nearly identical to the lake of his boyhood, technology bars his experience and the new, noisier boats disturb the serene atmosphere at the lake. The essay shows White engaging in an internal struggle between acting and viewing the lake as he did when he was a boy and acting and viewing it as an adult, or as his father would have. JSTOR ( April 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Once More to the Lake" – news ![]() Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. ![]()
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