a torch and a knife in the dark
a story about the gift of a man's presence
Dear Z.,
You’re three, fiercely. (Or, as you say: fluwee!).
I’d like to share a story with you from my own life, in service to you, if or when curiosity arises, knowing something deeper of me than just the roles and patterns we’re building with one another in real time.
Love you, kiddo.
Papa Sean
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When I was 23, my elder cousin, Rich ‘Doc’ Holliday, sat me down in his gun room. I was visiting his home in Nikiski, Alaska, where I’d moved with your Oma Karen and Uncle Christopher ten years before. The gun room, where he re-used fired casings to make new rounds, was the bedroom in which I’d slept as a kid.
Rich was an old-school roughneck who’d worked on Alaska’s North Slope in the oil fields for decades. He was a kind and caring father, and, I think, a thoughtful, deeply-feeling leader who lived perpendicular to the stereotypes of his industry, while able to connect with his comrades in the field.
I was fresh off my first season of commercial fishing, about to head to Iceland, and after that, I had no idea. The road was calling, and I intended to follow it.
While I don’t remember the specific details of our conversation, I do remember that Rich gave me his time that day. We sat together in his room, talking, for what seemed like hours. Near the end of the visit, Rich offered me two gifts: a Pelican Stealthlite 2400, a neon-yellow torch that was submersible and nearly indestructible, and a Gerber folding knife with a camouflage handle and non-serrated blade. It was not so unlike the black Benchmade Griptilian that I carry in my pocket now.
The names of these things might mean nothing to you, but as a former Boy Scout and a devoted outdoorsman at the time (at least in my mind), they represented a quality to me of which I wanted, one day, to feel worthy.
Like many young men setting out on exciting, uncertain journeys, I was unprepared for the toils ahead. I was grateful for the gifts, but didn’t yet understand the deeper value they would begin to offer over time. I was also resentful that I felt obligated to carry what were now redundant supplies in my already-heavy backpack, which contained everything I owned.
I carried the knife clipped on the inside of my left pants pocket through many months around Iceland, and through the UK, where I walked across Scotland, then hitchhiked around Ireland.
I returned stateside penniless and stayed for a while with your great-grandmother, Rose, in Massachusetts, then drifted down to Florida, eventually back to Alaska, where, the next summer, in Bristol Bay, near the summit of Mt. Cinnabar above Lake Aleknagik, I joyfully catapulted myself from a boulder into a snowfield.
In my exuberance, I did not realize until later, when we’d returned to the boatyard in Dillingham, that the knife had fallen out of my pocket, probably as I tumbled down the snow drift.
I was distraught. I begged my skipper to let me return to the mountain, but the salmon had begun to charge up the Nushagak River, and we were fishermen.
Though I returned to fish Bristol Bay every summer for the next twelve years, and many times returned to Aleknagik, I never again climbed the mountain, and never saw the knife again.
Whenever I again saw that mountain, it invited me to snap back to the present moment, to become more aware of the tools and gifts I carried—within and without.
The torch has stayed with me. For three years it has been your toy. Though the xenon bulb has long burned out, perhaps I can order another from some archaic warehouse that carries pre-LED light bulbs.
For the last three weeks, I’ve been inexplicably carrying the lightless torch in my day bag. I felt that this thing, which had illuminated some of the darkest moments of my life, had completed its purpose. I considered passing it along in some way that might help me avoid the heartache of direct disposal.
There is something in me that deeply values emptiness. It manifests as an impulse to get rid of possessions no longer in active use, or to compulsively empty the bulky contents of our basement. Where some people feel full and content after shopping and buying things, I feel bloated, exhausted, obligated.
Emptiness to me feels like freedom. It creates space for more love, connection, movement, and breath.
So, the other day, I walked to Heart Coffee, stopped by a little free library on the way, and set the neon-yellow torch inside, with thanks and a blessing for whomever came upon it. In that moment, I realized I was completing a cycle. The knife was taken by circumstance, but the torch I could release with intention, having absorbed its true gift.
As I walked to the coffeeshop, the memories began to flood in. when I returned to my tent at Sandwood Bay in NW Scotland after an exhilarating but tiresome 20+ mile day trip to Cape Wrath in savage Highland winds, that torch was the only light I could find, indeed the only light for miles. Later, when my car broke down one February night in Alaska, that torch helped me find the phone number of someone who could help, and kept me from freezing.
Indeed, the torch continued to shine into darker moments: as suicide became the most attractive life path I could at that time imagine, under a bridge in Eastern Europe, tucked inside my sleeping bag on a midwinter hitchhiking trip, I flipped the toggle on/off/on/off/on, bright light flashing point blank into my eyes, perhaps to see if there was anything worth anything in there—
No, the true gift was not the objects, despite their literal and metaphorical utility to shine awareness into dark places and to cut through obstacles, bullshit, and superficialities.
The gift, as I can only see it in retrospect, was of Rich’s time, attention, and love in a moment when a young and clueless me needed it most.
He did not offer me platitudes, or try to save me from my fate. He could not have known what was in store for me. But that experience became a blessing in my life that continues to pay dividends.
It offers me a template for how to be in the world as a man, a father, mentor, teacher, and guide. Also, a reminder of what it was to be a young man, setting out on an exciting journey into the unknown.
It is a reminder to lean into those moments, to offer value but not advice, connection and care without condition, and to really let go, and allow what wants to happen, to happen.
This is what men can offer one another. It is what elders can offer youngers: to give time, attention, care, curiosity, gifts and blessings without taking, needing gratitude, or holding too tight to anything at all.
So I share this story with you, not just as a tale of objects lost and let go, but as a promise of the time, attention, and presence I hope to offer you throughout your life.
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