‘Kayak Morning’ a serene ride
Roger Rosenblatt experienced a parent's worst nightmare four years ago. The death of a child.
His 38-year-old daughter, Amy, died suddenly, leaving behind a husband, three young children and two grieving parents.
Rosenblatt wrote poignantly of the tragedy in his best-selling memoir Making Toast, the tale of his, and his wife's, attempt to keep the family together and moving ahead. "To get on with it," as he wrote then.
Getting on with it wasn't as easy as he'd hoped.
Rosenblatt, an award-winning author of 15 books, is now back with what can only be described as a meditation on the universal experience of grief.
Taking to the waters near his home on Long Island, Rosenblatt sets out in a kayak to find some sort of peace in his daughter's untimely death.
"They say that people in grief become more like themselves," he writes. "I have always been a loner, so going out in a kayak suits my temperament. It also offers a solitude that is rare for me these days."
Rosenblatt, who teaches English and writing at Stony Brook University, captures his solitude on the water beautifully. His students are lucky to have such a craftsman as a teacher.
This is a quiet book. There's no other way to put it. There are no bells and whistles here. Certainly no fog horns blaring offshore. There's only silence as Rosenblatt's kayak slides over the water. Turtles, gulls, snakes and eels all make an appearance, then silently disappear.
"Quiet. Quiet beyond quiet," he writes. "My boat makes no sounds in the listless water."
And what does he learn as he glides? That his daughter will always be with him.
"This morning when I climbed into my kayak and headed out, I knew that I would be going nowhere, as I have been going nowhere for the past two and a half years. But my love for my daughter makes somewhere out of nowhere. In this boat, on this creek, I am moving forward, even as I am moving in circles. Amy returns in my love, alive and beautiful. I have her still."
A happy ending, if such tales can have happy endings.