One last sunset

Sun lit the sky pink and orange last night while I walked by the lake with my baby for the last time. Geese flew a V formation overhead. Hearing their honks, my daughter said “cack cack cack” because she thought they were ducks and she can’t say quack yet. A fish that looked about as long as my forearm jumped high out of the water and splashed back down. Bicyclists breezed past, joggers trudged. We heard the bounce of the ball hitting the concrete at the basketball court, “baw baw” she said. A ball is one of her favorite toys right now and she always says it twice. From the playground floated that happy hubhub of kids playing, a mix of laughing and upbeat shouting. “Baw baw! Baw baw!” she pointed. Once again I imagined asking the young guys at the court to stop their game and let my kid hold their basketball. Once again I turned away from the court hoping she’d forget about it soon after it was out of sight and earshot.

The pink on the clouds turned redder. The tops of the clouds mixed the pink with the darkening blue of the sky into a pale violet. The orange disc of the sun dropped closer to the treeline and lurking skyscrapers of downtown. I remembered a few specific sunset walks - the time we saw a beaver, the time we saw an eagle diving to catch fish, the time we saw goslings - but mostly I played a montage of instances I can’t place in time anymore but that add up to a kind of memory. Birds: herons, egrets, eagles, seagulls, ducklings, wood ducks, yellowlegs, many more. Dogs, on and off leashes, open to my kids’ attention and not. The sky a wash of bright color again and again and again. The waterline rising and falling with rain or lack of rain. Chasing and being chased by and racing with my older kid. Walking and holding my older kid’s hand. Holding my wife’s hand. Holding both of their hands. Holding the baby’s hand while she toddles. The baby in the carrier. My older kid in the carrier, when she was a baby.

“I don’t want this to be the last sunset here,” I think. “I am not ready for this to be the last sunset.” I kiss the baby’s forehead. She’s settled now, nuzzling into my chest, nearly asleep. “I want one more sunset here.” I start to wonder, do I really want one, just one? I think about a novel I read recently about cryogenic freezing of the dead or nearly dead. It is important to say the important things because if they’re unsaid they hurt, but once that’s done prolonged goodbyes just hurt more.

Several half-formed phrases bubble up in my mind “if only I could… just one more time…” If I had one more sunset I would want another. They’re a bit like potato chips. There’s never enough if I want one more. I don’t want one more. I want many more, I want all of them, I want an unending string of them every day or at least often – I want them when I want them, I want uninterrupted access to them. Sunset at the lake I mean, not potato chips. If I’m going to be done, if the sunset walks here at this lake end, then they end and “just one more” is never just one more.

I sigh, kiss the baby again, think about taking a picture. Pictures of sunset on the lake never work and not just because my camera sucks. They just don’t show what the sunset walk is like. I can’t photograph it, I try to take a mental photo, as if I can take it all in and hold it there, as if that’s the problem. The sun is out of sight now, the sky mostly a darker blue, streaks of darker pink and orange rise up from behind the trees. A bat flutters past. I slap a mosquito on my bicep. Time to go home. The itches aren’t the kinds of memories I want. There won’t be any more sunset walks by the lake and one more or one less wouldn’t change that. I try to appreciate the many I’ve had. I nuzzle the baby’s soft hair, it’s getting longer and curlier now, she’s only partly a baby now, getting to be a toddler really. I walk up the hill toward home.