Living Under Water

drawing by Kathie Sever

My dad was in water. Clean water. In 1950 he got a job, right out of college, working at a reservoir for the state of New Jersey and worked there until the day he retired. In his years there he imagined, designed and oversaw construction of a dam that supplied water to millions of people.

He used to joke that he was a “dam” engineer. He never swore otherwise. Rarely drank. Never smoked. Loved his wife and his 9 children too. He was a clean liver.

In his last days of life people gathered around his bedside to collect his stories about water supply and the reservoir and the land and the people all around it. If he died before they heard them, the stories would die too. So one by one they came. To hear as many stories as my dad could tell before he dismissed them from fatigue.

When we die, all that’s left are the stories. And a dam if you built one. And nine children too.

My grandfather was in water too. Hot water mostly. Too much of the drink. Too much of the smoking and a little too much of the fondness for the women folk as well. He lived in Canada for his last few years because my grandmother said his Mexican divorce didn’t count for nothing. She’d sooner see him rot in jail for bigamy than forgive him for his carousing.

Funny thing was that even years after they divorced he and my grandma hung out together. Had family dinners. And holidays too. They hung out so much that my mom didn’t know for a long time that they were divorced. Dirty secret. At the end though, with another wife in the picture, my grandmother could stand it no more.

He was an engineer, like my dad. And a tinkerer. He invented lots of things including a valve for those big old metal scuba helmets. He traveled to Japan a lot. Kind of the land of invention back then in the fifties. We have lots of little Japanese dolls and toys to prove it. There’s a belief that he had a family over there. No proof though unless you count the picture of him with the Japanese woman and the Eurasian looking kids. I didn’t know my grandfather. He died when I was young. But my older cousins told me he would give you a pretzel if you ran and got him a beer. I probably would have liked that.

When we die, all that’s left are the stories. And a scuba helmet. And maybe a family in Japan. How long before it’s all wiped away is up to the family. And the stories we tell.