To The Pond
Allie wanted to go to the pond to feed the geese.
It was a beautiful autumn day – the kind of day where she could feel the tender warmth of the sun as its rays caressed her face as well as the light breeze that gently tousled her hair so that it would brush against her shoulders. As she traversed the path leading down to the water’s edge, she felt the familiar crunch of the eroded gravel and crackly fallen leaves beneath her feet. This was her favorite season by far, because to her there was something so comforting about the foliage changing colors, the rich earthy tones slowly absorbing her surroundings like clockwork. It was the last month in which the geese would be here until next year, for soon they would have to fly south to their temporary homes, and this was the last time she would be able to return to the pond before the weather got too cold.
Her father had shown her this place years ago, before she was even old enough to know the biological reasons behind the phenomenon of leaves changing color and falling or the scientific word for when animals move south for the winter. He had taught her where the hidden opening in the gate was, the entrance that most people did not know about, and every time she went there she thought about how they shared that secret. He had taken her down the gravel path, pointing to the bush that had a striking resemblance to an elephant and the gnarled tree that looked like a little old lady bent over a cane – she used to make up stories about the elderly woman beating the elephant away with her cane, and them being frozen in nature there for eternity. And when the path stopped abruptly, he pointed to the pond and said that even though it was called Piker’s Pond, he liked to call it his very own Walden Pond (Allie, of course, was too young to understand the reference at the time). It was the place he used to come to pass the time solitarily, but for Allie, it was her place to escape from the burdens of life. There was something inherently tranquil about staring at the undulating water and watching the ducks swim about nonchalantly or lying in the grass and listening to the sound of small squirrels chipping away at their stash of acorns. And so over the years, it had developed into Allie’s own kind of Walden Pond as well.
She took out the plastic bag from her leather satchel, filled with slices of bread, and sat on a rock so she could rip them into bite-sized pieces. As she looked down at her hands methodically making tears, first vertically and then horizontally, she recalled the times when her hands were smaller and her father used to help her with this task. Every Saturday morning during the months of September and October while Allie’s mother was asleep, she and her father would walk to the pond – she of course had the important responsibility of carrying the loaf of bread while he led the way – not only to feed the geese, but to spend time with each other. Allie could not recall the last time they truly enjoyed the pleasure of the other’s presence. She was so busy being a teenager (throwing herself into her schoolwork and her budding social life, only stopping at home to study and shower) and he was preoccupied with his job (as a doctor, he worked long hours and spent much of his time on-call in an exhausted, stressed state), which were not the ideal conditions for father-daughter bonding.
Allie began to toss the bread pieces towards the flock of geese, which had been clustered around the water’s edge, waddling around each other clumsily. Once they realized that food was being offered to them, the geese flew towards her, scrambling for the coveted pieces of bread as if it were a matter of life or death. Allie noticed some of the larger geese transferring the food to the mouths of the smaller ones, suspecting that the elder ones were feeding their weaker, less-nimble children. She witnessed the protective nature of the birds, almost feeling jealous of the awkward-looking young geese surrounding the mother goose, because she wished that she had that kind of connection with her parents, that she could share a simple meal with them just as these creatures could.
She could not remember the last time the three members of her family had sat down for a meal together other than a pre-planned, the-entire-side-of-the-family-will-be-there kind of event. When she was younger, they used to gather at that cherry oak table every night for dinner, and each person would have their set place – the green placemats, her grandmother’s silverware, the crystal glasses, the plates that had designs with leaves on them. Now, their meals consisted of grab and go bags, dishes packed tightly into plastic Tupperware, take-out boxes full of leftovers, and that table went unused as the three of them stoically passed each other.
Past the flock of geese, Allie saw two figures emerging from the distance. She wondered who else would be in this seemingly secluded place on a Saturday morning, only to see a young man holding the hand of a little girl, who could not have been more than four years old, Allie reckoned. As they came nearer, she hid behind the trunk of a massive oak tree, not wanting to interrupt what she figured would be a tender moment between the two. Yet out of the corner of her eye, she could not help but watch the father and his daughter as they too set about to feed the geese.
The little girl dug her hand into the wrinkled brown paper bag she was clutching with the other hand and attempted to throw the breadcrumbs at the geese, but Allie noticed that her sense of aim was quite off and that despite all of the force behind her actions, the breadcrumbs did not go very far, gathering at the child’s feet. The hungry geese flew towards the girl, voracious and determined to satiate their appetite, and the sound of their flapping wings caused her to scream out. Her father, who had been setting up his fishing rod some distance away, ran towards his daughter, rescuing her from the angry birds that could have maimed her, but also chastising her in an angry tone that Allie found all too familiar.
Allie’s father always had a bit of a temper, and as of lately, his yelling matches seemed to be getting longer and louder. But it was not the sheer volume that bothered her – it was the fact that every argument that arose was over the smallest of things, and his behavior only sought to escalate the situation, making a mountain out of a molehill, until he inevitably exploded in a fit of profanities, false claims, judgments. She had thrown around phrases when she spoke of her father – verbally abusive, hypercritical, anger management issues – but she could never seem to understand why he reacted the way he did, and she hoped that one day she would be able to see past the hurtful, biting words and understand him, though he never attempted to understand her. Allie once tried to open up to her father, confessed to something she was not proud of, and he never let her live it down – not only did he make the situation worse, but he would subtly bring it up in conversation so that she could not escape this mistake of hers, as much as she wanted to. And so she pulled back from him, opting to shut him out of her life by not sharing it with him, as if the two of them were strangers that merely cohabited in the same places, but nothing more.
Allie watched as the father scooped his daughter up into his arms, enveloping her in a heartfelt hug as he held her close to him. She couldn’t help but feel jealous as she observed the love shared between these strangers, as well as an odd sense of déjà vu. It was the same feeling she had when she attended the Father’s Day dance years ago and saw all of the other girls dressed up in frilly little pink and purple dresses dancing with their daddies, while her own father failed to arrive, leaving her standing alone amidst those happy pairs. None of her friends understood the emptiness she felt whenever she would go over to their houses and see the way they interacted with their fathers, laughing at the shared inside jokes and light-heartedly making fun of each other, recounting fond memories and creating new ones – all things that Allie felt she would never have the opportunity to do. And this sad fact haunted her, because everywhere she went she saw perfect daddy-daughter combinations, but her own seemed permanently damaged, broken.
Allie sat down at the base of the tree trunk, hearing the honks of the geese in the background and watching the ducks swim leisurely about. Maybe her relationship with her father was not completely a lost cause, she thought, as she watched two golden leaves fall gently from the branch overhead onto her lap. Wasn’t it this very place that had brought the two of them together all those years ago? It was here that her father taught her how to skip rocks and told her that she could blow on those white puffballs of dandelions to make a wish, after all. This was the very tree that she hid behind during hide-and-go-seek almost every time, and her father would always take so long to find her, either because he could not tell which tree was which or because he pretended not to know. That rock over yonder was where she fell and scraped her leg, an incident that left a huge gash that her father cleaned and took care of, so that now it is only a faint scar, a reminder of the past. Perhaps if he came back here, if the two of them had something special to share, then they could start to rebuild.
And so Allie would stay here, by their very own Walden Pond, and wait.
Her father would find her.