Annie’s dad died several years ago. We called him PaPa. Everybody loved PaPa, but like all of us, he had his quirks.
PaPa loved working on his boat—an old trawler that required constant attention. He kept it at “the river.” Folks in Richmond, Virginia, are always talking about “the river.”
“The river?” I said, shortly after I met Annie. “What river?”
“It’s just ‘the river’,” Annie said. “Nobody ever says which one.”
“Well then, how are outsiders like me supposed to know which river somebody’s talking about?”
“You’re not,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t fret about it. If I decide to keep you, we’ll go to my family’s place at the river one of these days. You’ll catch on.”
Well, Annie decided to keep me and we went to “the river” with her family pretty regularly. Their version of “the river” was actually a creek—Carter’s Creek. It flowed into the Rappahannock River.
While at “the river,” I spent a lot of time on PaPa’s boat—not going anywhere, just scrubbing it and helping him fix it.
“Sam, you need yourself a boat,” he said.
“I’d rather go to work,” I said.
After working on the boat all day, we’d sit on the deck at their cottage and watch boats tootling up and down the creek. Sometimes we’d drink a beer. One time I drank two.
“So who are your neighbors?” I asked one evening, pointing to the cottage just up the creek.
“That’s a sad story,” PaPa said. “Those folks live in Baltimore. They moved down here to retire a year or so ago. Hadn’t been here a month when the guy’s wife had a stroke. They had to move her back to Baltimore. I never see them anymore. Made me worry I might be due for a stroke.”
“I’m sure you’re fine,” I said.
“Don’t be so sure. Sometimes I feel little twitches in my brain.”
“We all feel those, PaPa.”
“Not like these. These are different.”
“So what about the folks who live in that house?” I asked, pointing to the house just down the creek.
“Another sad story,” he started. “That couple bought the place as a weekend getaway. I saw them here three or four times before I heard he’d had a bad heart attack. Haven’t seen them here in months. Makes me think I might be due for a heart attack.”
” I doubt that,” I said.
“Well, I don’t discount the possibility. I get pains sometimes in my chest. Mostly it’s gas, but who knows what’s really going on in there?”
“What about that house up on the hill?” I asked, trying to find a happier subject.
“That is a really sad story,” PaPa said. “That poor lady started having some pain in her elbow, so she went to the doctor. He said it was tennis elbow, but it wasn’t. Two week later she was dead from cancer.”
“Jeez, that is really sad,” I said.
“But that’s not the saddest part,” he said. “The saddest part is I’ve been having some pain in my elbow, too.”
“Do you think you might be suffering from hypochondria?” I asked.
“Maybe so,” he said. “I seem to have everything else.”
Several years later, PaPa did develop cancer. He knew he was going to die, but he was in surprisingly good spirits. “I can relax now. Don’t have to worry about getting something that’s going to kill me because I’ve already got it.”
I think he meant it.
I asked him if there was something he’d learned from living his seventy-plus years. “If you had to give a younger person one bit of advice, what would it be?” I asked.
“That’s a tough one,” he said. “I’ve got lots of advice to dole out. Let me think.” He looked out across the creek watching another trawler heading toward the river.
“I’d tell a younger person to pay more attention to family and close friends,” he said. “We tend to take them for granted, you know. We spend too much time trying to please folks that don’t play all that big a part in our lives-clients and customers and whatnot. I’d pay less attention to the bit players and pay more attention to the main characters.”
“Good advice,” I said.
“Hearing it is one thing,” he said. “Living it is another.”
