In the depths of my memory, many things I did with my father still live. These things come to represent, in fact, what I call 36 and love.
I don’t remember my father ever getting into a swimming pool. But he did 37 the water. Any kind of 38 ride seemed to give him pleasure. 39 he loved to fish; sometimes he took me along.
But I never really liked being on the water, the way my father did. I liked being 40 the water, moving through it, 41 it all around me. I was not a strong 42 , or one who learned to swim early, for I had my 43 . But I loved being in the swimming pool close to my father’s office and 44 those summer days with my father, who 45 come by on a break. I needed him to see what I could do. My father would stand there in his suit, the 46 person not in swimsuit.
After swimming, I would go 47 his office and sit on the wooden chair in front of his big desk, where he let me 48 anything I found in his top desk drawer. Sometimes, if I was left alone at his desk 49 he worked in the lab, an assistant or a student might come in and tell me perhaps I shouldn’t be playing with his 50 . But my father always 51 and said easily, “Oh, no, it’s 52 .” Sometimes he handed me coins and told me to get 53 an ice cream…
A poet once said, “We look at life once, in childhood; the rest is 54 .” And I think it is not only what we “look at once, in childhood” that determines our memories, but 55 , in that childhood, look at us.