He had always been afraid of heights his whole life; never going near the edge of anything higher than about three feet off the ground, never going up a ladder. Of course, there was that one time when his father forced him, shamed him, really, into going up the ladder to clear the snow off the roof of the house and then, after oh so carefully making his way up the ladder and helping his dad shovel the snow off the edge of the roof, his dad had climbed effortlessly down the ladder and left him alone on the roof.

He had been frozen with fear at the thought of going down the home-made wooden ladder that his father had built and that now stood its feet in the snow, the other end leaning against the gutter on the edge off the roof, the gutter frozen solid with ice. He had stayed on the roof after his father had gone in the house, he tried to climb down a couple of times but his body shook so much that he felt like the nails were going to come out of the ladder and he and the ladder would go crashing down. He paced on the roof of the house that he had grown up in, back and forth, over the hallway, over the living room, the kitchen, over his own bedroom, his own safe bedroom. He imagined his two sisters and his mother safe inside the house while he was stuck up on the roof and he wondered why his father had been cruel enough to just walk away and leave him stranded way up on the roof. Maybe it was a test? Maybe his father was simply ashamed of him? He had thought that getting up on the roof and helping his dad shovel the snow off the roof, a good three feet of it, would earn him some token of esteem in his father’s eyes. Now he was out here alone, his father...what was his father doing? Why had he left him up here? His dad knew he was afraid of heights, or did he? His dad didn’t know too much about him really, they weren’t that close and didn’t talk much. He had always felt that he was a disappointment to his father, a son that was quiet, bookish, kept to himself and now was too scared to climb down this rickety ladder and go inside. Why had his father built this stupid ladder instead of buying a new one? A nice safe metal one? He knew the answer: his dad was cheap. Cheap to the point that he would risk not just his own neck but the neck of his only son by building a ladder from pieces of wood he had lying around the basement. Why couldn’t he just buy a new one?!?! He felt foolish up there on the roof, the January sun was out but it was a bit cold and all of the neighbours could see him – he picked up a shovel and pretended to push snow off the roof, walking around as if he were checking to make sure that the job was done. That had only lasted a few minutes before it made him feel even more foolish than he had before.

He approached the edge of the roof yet again and looked down. The snow bank looked soft but he wondered if there was something underneath the snow that would hurt him if he fell. Maybe it didn’t matter, maybe there was enough snow so that even if he did fall he wouldn’t hurt himself. Was that what his dad was counting on? Did his dad know something about the ladder that he didn’t? Was the ladder on its last legs, ready to snap when he was only a few steps down? That would teach him a lesson, he thought, then he’d find out for sure if there was anything underneath that snow bank. He knew that there shouldn’t be anything there, in the summer that was just a strip of earth next to the house, a little garden that held gladiola and other flowers. He put the shovel down and, turning backwards, slowly put his left foot on the ladder, he felt the ladder settle in the snow, his hands, his entire body shaking, he knew that he had to put his right foot on the ladder, get his whole weight on the ladder and go down, balancing slowly, but go down and prove to his father that he was worthy of a smile, a wink, a nod, worthy of something. He looked for something to hold on to while he put his right foot out in midair and tried to find the ladder. Where was it??? Where was the ladder??? Shaking even more, he felt the ladder shift suddenly in its snowy foundation and he scrambled back to the relative safety of the roof. From where he was, he could see his mother glance at him from the kitchen. She didn’t smile but she seemed to be saying something to someone in the house. He moved back and picked up the shovel again, a feeling of anger competing with a feeling of shame. Damn it! Why had he come up on the roof of all places! Did his father’s approval really mean this much to him? Did he really have to risk his neck on a ladder held together by a few nails and an aversion to spending money? Yes, he knew he did. He heard the back door open and his father stepped on to the back patio, his coat on but unzipped, his breath coming out in clouds as the two of them stood and looked at each other. His father didn’t look annoyed or sad or angry, he didn’t look amused, he didn’t seem to have any emotion on display. They looked at each other in silence. His father came over to the ladder and held it as he talked him down the ladder, one step at a time, never saying more than was necessary. As soon as his right foot touched the snow bank, his father turned and walked back into the house, leaving him to put the ladder away, to put his fear away and to make his entrance into the house, to listen to his mother and his two sisters ridicule him.

His father always sat at a desk in their kitchen, it was a big kitchen with a little nook at the far end away from the stove and fridge. All he ever remembered about his father was the back of his father’s head as he sat at that desk. He knew that that would be all he would see when he went into the house. He carefully brought the ladder down and put it in the garage, trying to go as slowly as possible; he didn’t want to go in the house, he almost wished that he was still up on the roof, which didn’t seem so far from down here on the ground. But he knew that he would have to go into the house, to the back of his father’s head, bent over the desk, to the ridicule of his sisters and the silent treatment from his mother. He felt deep shame, he should have been able to come down the ladder himself, it wasn’t that bad and it would have made an impression on his father. But he hadn’t. He had stood up there, frozen by his fear of heights, willing himself to be somewhere, anywhere, else. He sighed as he closed the garage door and walked to the back door of the house.

All of that had been over thirty years ago, he thought. His parents had both died and he hadn’t spoken to his two sisters in well over ten years. His life had unfolded in ways that he couldn’t have imagined when he had stood on the edge of that snowy roof all those years ago. He had gone on to university, had jobs, made love, made mistakes, tried his best to be a good man. He smiled to himself as he thought of what had been and what would be. Once again, he was on a roof, this one was much higher than that snowy roof at the other end of his life. But this roof felt comfortable, it was what he needed. This roof held no terror for him. The ground below seemed like an old friend calling to him as he stepped off the edge into nothingness.