November, 1968

The Atlantic winds blow so hard the rain does not fall down but lashes horizontally. The house grumbles and moans its complaint against the storm and in the harbour boats, both small and large, cling to their moorings, dipping and weaving in a violent jig with the weather. The steady gale occasionally lets up for a few moments and in the brief quiet the solid house creaks its relief and then, without build up, the house is slammed again. And if my siblings watching TV, my mother quietly engaged in her recently taken up hobby of knitting, or my father down the hall listening to music belies the ferocity just through the window it has more to do with the fact that it is not so much a storm as just another November evening near the point in the ocean where the warm Gulf Steam becomes frigid and converts itself into the North Atlantic Current. Short of the power going out, violent winds and torrential rain in November went mostly unnoticed.

My father had a small room just past the stairs – too small to be called a den and too big to be called a closet – that he took over as his own. Inside there was a recliner, shelves he built and filled himself and a stereo. It was off limits to kids. I do not remember when exactly I got to spend time listening to music (and later reading) in that room with my father but I cannot help but think it would have been on a blustery November night when everyone, stuck inside, just did what they enjoyed – whether lazy or productive – the November gales demanded neither explanation nor apology.

The music my father listened to was out of fashion and perhaps a little too sentimental but he savoured every word and note and to him there was none better than Nat King Cole; a man whose honeyed voice sang not so much truths as wishful thinking. And in the face of a fading marriage what comfort my father took in Cole’s bittersweet words is known only to him. A wet, cruel November evening in a small, safe harbour with my father trying to glean the deeper meaning of simple love ballads from another time well serves at my eighth month of life.

Not from 1968, but from my first year,
When I Fall in Love, Nat King Cole