The Old Man and the Wind

Observed Memories

The wind was relentless on this day but the old man seemed impervious to it, sitting on the wooden decking in his rocking chair. Long, silver hair lashed across his deeply creased and weathered face. Icy blue eyes stared out from beneath thick brows, eyes that had seen victory, defeat, elation, and the deepest of sorrows. Large, calloused hands rested on the wooden arms of his rocker. Occasionally, if you were watching close enough, you could see them tighten into a white knuckled grip but, for the most part, they just rested on those arms as he rocked back and forth.

Old Man on the front porch in a Rocking Chair - Created by Substack’s AI Generator

Sitting in front of the house they had built together, he thought about the wife who had departed this world nearly a decade ago, taking a part of his soul with her when she had gone to join the angels. A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered her touch, her gentle ways. They had had their days and their nights, their highs and their lows, the times they had been pushed to the brink and the times they had always found a way to rekindle what had seemed to be slipping away.

At times the wind softened, a gentle rustling through the leaves of the trees overhead. In those times he could hear her voice, the soft humming as she tended to the chores of their home. He could hear the distant sound of children laughing, ocean waves gently splashing around their ankles, low voices talking into the night, and favorite songs playing over the radio. In those times, he could recall the excited footfalls of children running to see what Santa had left under the tree or her footsteps on the wooden floor as she had headed for the kitchen to put on that first pot of coffee. They were all gone now and he found himself wondering how the hell, in all of his stubborn and ornery ways, had he out lived everyone that had meant so much to him.

The winds would gust, bending branches above him to the point they seemed ready to snap. Those winds would bring the memories of raw emotion, screams of anger and pain, triumphant shouts, and the uncontrollable sobs of grief and despair. Pounding rock and roll, egotistical chest pounding, defiant proclamations. No rhythm to those memories. Just an onslaught of noise and flashes of emotion. He would close his eyes in those moments, to protect them against the wind, allowing a tear to squeeze out through the tightly sealed eye lids. The slow rocking continued, however, the cadence not changed by the force of the winds.

Beyond his small, carefully manicured lawn and the wrought iron fencing was a desert. It stretched out for miles – to the distant mountains. They had always loved this view, especially in the mornings when the world was silent and the first light brought optimism and promises of a new day, a chance to quietly reflect on the life they had. Every now and then, a tumble weed would blow through his line of sight – dancing with the wind, no control of it’s direction or it’s speed. They were so much like the memories that drifted through his mind – totally random, from different points in time, triggering flashes of emotion that had no consistency to them. Innocent smiles, wonder-filled eyes of youth, adoring eyes of that special love, tear stained faces, championship trophies, and unpaid bills with their own messages of anxiety and imagined hopelessness.

Sometimes, these days, though, when he sat there in his rocker, impervious to the afternoon winds, he wasn’t seeing the faraway mountains, the manicured lawn, or the mesquite dotted desert. He was seeing the ocean with it’s white caps and rolling tides, powerful and calming at the same time. Like staring into a camp fire, the ocean invited a man to lose his thoughts and his soul into it’s wonder. He missed the ocean and it’s magic, it’s scent, it’s sounds. He knew he would probably never see it again and he regretted that they had not spent more time sitting on a beach, losing themselves in it’s spell.

Sometimes, these days, he could swear that he could see a Man Walking on the Water, reaching a hand out to him as a band of angels sang gently from the heavens. He prayed for that to become reality and knew that, someday soon, it would. He prayed for that day because then, he knew, those loving faces that he missed would be welcoming him home once again.