By Andrew Smith

Portland, Oregon

My father used to take me for walks on Sundays when my twin brother and I were boys. I didn’t know it then, but for him it was the highlight of his week; he was happiest in the fresh air with his boys, away from the demands of his workday week. He was a fashion manufacturer, and the pressures of calendars, customers, and trends were not something I knew much about then.

In later years, my father and I would resume our ritual walks whenever I came home to visit. It was on one of those occasions, five years before he passed away, that I stopped to photograph him as he walked ahead of me. That photo became my touchstone for reality.

It was from that moment that I came to think of how I would want my own life to look if it was in pictures seen by others after I was gone. How would a collage of me look? What would it communicate to others who had known me? What would its story tell?

But as time went on, this literal idea merged with a bigger one. Becoming a father myself and remembering the impact of that photograph of my own father triggered a conscious decision in myself to create for my own children some kind of memory bank of me for them.

And so for the last few years I have taken the time to recount the stories of my childhood and my parents’ childhoods to my two children. On one level, it is just the “when Daddy was a boy” type of thing; and on another level, it is a little parable relating to something we are doing, something they are doing, or something we are just imagining. Often these chats take place around bath time; that is when the day seems to come to a place of centering on thinking about what they have done, or planning for future exploits large and small. Somehow relating my children to my life through my life and my memories seems to help them relate to themselves.

Somehow this does not seem corny to them. Up to this point, at least, there has been no rolling of the eyes, no “Dad, we’ve heard that a thousand times,” no “Whatever.” What I have observed is a fascination in them for what has gone on before them in time, some carpet on which they can ride into tomorrow, some connection that their father is someone to talk to because of what he has seen and done. There is a relationship of the past to the present and their future that helps them ground their own dreams and fears to a place of peace for them. Amidst their crazy days of school, sports, homework, friends, and the millions of messages they receive from every communication vehicle that surrounds them, they like to return to their father’s memories, by creating memories of me.

Recently, my younger son brought me a picture he had drawn at school. It was a picture of a boat in which he and I were traveling across the seas to a place called “College” where we were to have great adventures. I asked him what type of adventures, and he replied, “Adventures in learning and story-making.” I thought my father would have smiled on his walk that day if he could have heard that. It is a handcrafted memory for my son and me, too.

And that same evening, they fell asleep in their beds as I was giving an interview in Japanese to a reporter in Tokyo. The next morning I apologized to them for not being in their room to say good night as we usually do, and my older son said, “No problem, Dad. It was so cool falling asleep to our weird father speaking that strange language. It was better than video games.”

Thank you, Dad. Thank you, my children.