Once More to the Sanderling

Essayist E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake," a vivid description of a trip he took with his son to the same lake where White's father had brought him as a boy, always stirs my memories of my own father and our sojourns to the Sanderling. Now my trips to the coast are with my own son. The years and the yearning fade away, and, if only for a few days, three generations merge into a single grain on the grand strand. Here's a passage from White's classic:

I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smelling the bedroom, and hearing the boy sneak quietly out and go off along the shore in a boat. I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father. The sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an entirely new feeling, but in this setting it grew much stronger.

My father is with me always, but nowhere is his presence more acutely felt than at our family beach house. Silas would be so fortunate if, when his father grows up, I can become half the man my father was.