Breakwater (In Memoriam, Tony Milobar)

In springtime, snow melt from the surrounding mountains gathers in streams, cascades down verdant slopes, and swirls across the surface of the lake. The waters rise, nudging ever closer to the stones first laid down by Tony and his children. A wheelbarrow full of stones for each of them to haul, before breakfast, from the forest out back with its birch trees and singing frogs and moose that sometimes came to drink at the water’s edge. This was long ago, during languid summers when the cabin was young, the kids were small, their parents new to the rush and tumble of family life. Everyone was young then.

Together they built a low wall, with stones and slabs of shale hefted into the station wagon from alongside the highway that brought them across the Rocky Mountains in summer. The wall grew larger and stronger. Over several summers it was widened and made more secure. It became a breakwater, a perch, a resting place. It offered sure footing to a generation of children who walked upon its stones, smoothed by the highest of the spring waters and warmed in the summer sun. Then another generation came, and they too walked upon it. My own children walk upon that wall, and they do not forget who built it.

The wall now stretches most of the way across the beachfront. It divides in the middle to offer a walkway to the shore. On the west side, it borders and provides space for the plum trees that feed bears at the end of summer. On the east side it edges a grassy slope casually dotted with armchairs — a place for gathering. The wall continues to shape, and to provide space for, the activities of all who visit that family summer home. It has held.

Some years ago, when my kids were small and Tony and I worked on repairs to the wall, I came to understand that these stones are a perfect expression of his life. For he brought them all together — the stones, the children, the family — and he held them. He gave both containment and room for growth. He held fast when the waters rose and when they fell back. He was smoothed, over time. He was purposeful. He did not talk about this. He persisted, he held fast.

On the day that I married Elizabeth, Tony seized my hand firmly and looked me in the eye. With one direct glance, he conveyed that I too should hold fast, that I must persist through the rising and falling waters, that I would be made stronger by family and time and the persistence of purpose. He welcomed me into that space, invited me to find sustenance as a wandering bear finds the summer plums.

This summer I will repair the wall again. The masonry of the eastern edge has begun to fray, and the stones there are loose. A few have fallen shoreward and now lie upon the soft sand. Once again, the waters will cover them this spring and smooth them, but will not move them from beneath the wall that is their home. I came to Tony and his family as a loose stone, drifting and wayward. I was brought forward into a place of belonging. I was lifted into place. That was his way. He knew — without speaking or cajoling — how to find the fit of things, of people, of moments. He knew how to hold fast, to let the waters rise and fall, to persist in quietness and purpose until all was fashioned, tight and true.

The wall parts, and grants access to the shore. Sand gathers here, washed up by the restless waters of spring. Soft, white sand, warm underfoot in summer. At the shoreward end lies the largest of the stones: flat, tinged with blue and gray, situated at the perfect height for Tony to sit and gaze, as he often did, out upon the ruffled waters of the lake. This is how I see him: the capstone, watching the waters rise and fall, finding for each thing its place among the enduring stones.