An Epic Scene

An Epic Scene

Epic: “Pertaining to that kind of narrative poetry which celebrates some heroic personage of history or tradition.” Shorter Oxford Dictionary

An October morning, and I sit in the front yard, throwing a ball for Remi the Dog and waiting for son David to arrive so he could borrow a car. I sit amongst mist that steams up from the ground stained, gold and green, by earthbound trees.

David arrives, mist parting before him like Moses at the Red Sea. “When we drove up,” he says, “the fog was shrouding you, like some epic scene.”

So it’s an epic scene, is it? If so, then Remi has dashed off to chase an epic groundhog, a neighbor’s dog has just taken an epic dump out by the willow tree, and the neighbor himself, oblivious to the offending dog, continues talking at epic volume into his stupid cell phone.

If this scene constitutes an epic, it is because David has pronounced it so, and then driven away to his job tending epic-sized suburban yards. He leaves behind a father, no longer merely dog-sitting in his yard, but now a protagonist in a mighty narrative, at least an Iliad or a Pentateuch. He leaves behind a father now a defender of Stalingrad, a casualty at Gettysburg, a fog-bound witness to the birth of worlds.

He leaves behind a David to his Absalom, a Saul to his Jonathan, a father to an epic son.