Joel Harris

Joel Harris

Joel Harris

More athlete than scholar, Joel Harris was RI and New England hurdles champion both in high school and college. Sidelined permanently, his junior year, after breaking a bone in his foot, he switched to academics graduating cum laude in economics at Harvard and publishing a story in Escapade Magazine.  During a long business career, Harris has published over 25 stories in many venues including Carleton Miscellany, Prairie Schooner (reprinted in, Voices in Literature, Language, and Composition, Ginn & Co.), Transatlantic Review, Confrontation, The Long Story #31; Northwest Review, and The Texas Review. He is married with one daughter.

 

  My father died over 40 years ago. I knew he was worried whether I would settle down after my divorce. I had a livelihood to earn and the responsibility of bringing up two children. A child, once, to my father, I have finally grown able enough to serve another generation. He would have loved that.

He was 81 the last year of our life together. In January, I visited him in Florida. Mother said: “Help Daddy with his shower.” He was recovering from a stroke. I undressed, got into the shower stall with him. He sat on a stool, holding his four-legged walker, enough room for me to scrub his back. High on his chest, a pacemaker bulged like a hockey puck. I washed his feet, grateful to help him.

My father smelled of Yardley cologne and Desenex powder, iodine and witch hazel. He was fastidious but never vain.

His favorite song: “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places . . . “

He would sing in the car, driving to work or to the beach on a summer weekend. A romantic, an optimist, he had an ear for harmony and loved to entertain.

My favorite photo: Dad winning the hundred-yard dash in a track meet, circa 1916, crossing the finish line in a blur of ancient film.

We often drove along a hill overlooking the harbor; below us, the docks where my father and uncle accumulated cargo for shipment overseas—the dock a toll booth through which scrap iron moved at a few extra dollars per ton. “We need the dock to survive,” he explained, “Without export we’re just another junk dealer.”

My uncle never played games, nor trained as an athlete. He had a powerful instinct to survive and brushed aside everyone with a fearsome temper. In measure, as my father loved, he despised. But he was the necessary leader—cold, frugal, devoted to work.

I wished I could have shared my modest success with Dad. I had an attractive wife he would have loved. My children had their own work to do. How fortunate to have my father’s guidance when I was an athlete:

“Do the best you can,” he said.

I’m certain, after all, that my father loved me. There are moments when I know this life will surely end, the revelation brief and chilling. But the hero in my conscious mind marches on, refusing to acknowledge for long his mortality. I have come to realize that dying may not be so terrible, for I will surely see him again.

There will be a sweet reunion somewhere, sometime with another dreamer.

When my son was eight, we were driving home from a visit with my parents, and Steve asked me, “Do you know me, Daddy?” I said, “Of course. Why do you ask?” And he said, “Because I’m adopted. Because I’m not really your son.” Only after Steve died in a tragic accident in Nicaragua, where he taught history at The American School, did I realize how little, in fact, I knew him. And myself.

Coming of age takes a lifetime.

h.s.hurdles
The last hurdle in finals of a high school RI State meet. Age 17
Finished 3rd in finals to the Olympic champ, junior year in college.