MANY YEARS AFTER I saw this canoe carved into a giant boulder in an Ontario park, I boarded a snow covered train to West Virginia to see my parents.  My father already had cancer, but now a brain tumor had been found and he was waiting for the hospital to get new machines that could radiate the tumor.  My brother, Terry, sister-law, Ellen, and my mother and I, took turns sitting by Dad’s bedside, worried that his tumor might be malignant, or the radiation wouldn’t stop the growth, or the rest of his cancer would spread.

I was used to my father laughing and talking all the time. He was an engineer and a math wizard.  He could crunch numbers without using a calculator. Now he was depressed, he couldn’t even balance his checkbook. He weighed ninety pounds, slept constantly, and hadn’t spoken in days.

“I have to build a boat,” A mumble came from the bed.

My mother, Terry, and I rushed to his side, relieved to hear him say something, anything.

“Penfile.” Dad’s eyes opened, “A stencil…a pencillll…”

Struggling to sit up, he pointed to a small table across the room next to the patio doors mumbling about needing paper. We were so glad he was moving again, we helped him over to the table and brought him a pencil and paper.

Dad stared out the patio doors into the snowy fields that went on for acres.  Then he turned to us.  “The boat…it’s going to be thirty feet long with a full kitchen under the main deck.”

Terry mouthed, “Boat? What boat? Ma and I shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders.

“I need my books,” Dad said, waving at the bookcase across the room.

I walked over to the bookcase.  He must have meant, The World’s Best Sailboats. I had given it to him years ago as a birthday present. It was in an instruction book on how to build a sailboat. I took the book to him and he started thumbing through it.

Dad waved my brother over to his table.  “There’s some things I have to find out about jibs and riggings,” he said. He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to my brother. “Could you go into town and do some research in the library?”

“Sure Dad,” Terry said, rolling his eyes at me.

Ma motioned for Terry and I to go into the hallway.

“Is it the tumor that’s causing this crazy boat idea?” she whispered.

“Ma, don’t worry.” My brother shrugged it off. “Dad can hardly hold a pencil. He’s not going to build a boat.”

The next day, sitting at his table again, Dad asked my mother, “What kind of kitchen would you like in the boat?”

Ma threw up her hands and motioned us out into the hallway again.

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Terry. “How much would this boat thing cost?”

My brother thought a moment. “Probably ten thousand dollars,” he whispered.

“What!” my mother said.

“But that’s not going to happen.”

“We’ve got hospital bills to pay!”

I chimed in, “Maybe we could help him build it.”

“Help him?” Ma’s fists leapt to her sides.

“But it’s not…” Terry said.

Ma swung around to Terry and threw up her hands. “Now she’s siding with him? Now she thinks he should build a ship in our backyard?”

“Hey, both of you.” Terry said. “Even if Toby and I helped him it would take ten years to build this thing.”

“Ten years?” I said.

“Listen, Terry.”  Ma grabbed his shirt sleeve.  “This is important. We don’t have much money.  This boat would cost us our life savings.”

Terry said, “But Ma, he’s not going to build it.”

Ma took a deep breath. “Okay, okay, he’s not going to do it!”

We followed Ma back into the bedroom just as Dad pointed out the glass patio doors and said, “I’m going to build the boat right out there in the cornfield.”

“Terry! You said he wasn’t going to do it.”

That’s when it hit me – that Algonquin boat I saw carved into the boulder in the park…