In the depths of my memory, many things I did with my father still live. I call these things1and love.
I don't remember my father ever getting into a swimming pool. But he did2the water. Any kind of3ride seemed to give him pleasure.4he loved to fish; sometimes he took me along.
But I never really liked being on the water, the way my father did. I liked being5the water, moving through it, having it all around me. I was not a strong6, or one who learned to swim early, for I had my 7. But I loved being in the swimming pool close to my father's office and8those summer days with my father, who9come by on a break. I needed him to see what I could do. My father would stand there in his suit, the10person not in swimsuit.
After swimming, I would go11 his office and sit on the wooden chair in front of his big desk, where he let me12anything I found in his top desk drawer. Sometimes, if I was left alone at his desk while he worked in the lab, an assistant or a student might come in and tell me perhaps I shouldn't be playing with his13. But my father always showed up and said easily, “Oh, no, it's fine.” Sometimes he handed me coins and told me to get14an ice cream…
A poet once said, “We look at life once, in childhood; the rest is memory." And I think it is not only what we “look at once, in childhood” that determines our memories, but15, in that childhood, look at us.
