22 years later…

The Boat, December 1980.

It is surprising, even to me, that the following story is true. Or at least it’s going to start that way. I’m still hoping for a miracle ending, but even if D- gets out of jail soon, I doubt he could do anything else to help me. And thus I could be forced to concoct an elaborate, romantic conclusion to go along with the first part of the narrative. But let’s see if we get that far. After all, I’ve only been thinking about telling this story for about 22 years. But in the past two years it started getting particularly interesting. So here goes.

For the first ten years of my life there was a forty-foot steel sailboat taking slow shape within the white picket fenced yard of my suburban family home. My father had a dream and was making it happen. It was kind of a spectacle, actually. The neighbors had swing sets and plastic lawn chairs. We had a hulking boat skeleton that towered over the kitchen window and grass littered with fragments of steel and My Little Ponies. Strangers would stop their cars in front of our house, get out to ask questions, visit again and again to observe the progress. I remember that the mailman seemed fascinated.

In his makeshift suburban boatyard, miles from the water, my dad labored behind his welding mask during most of his free daylight hours. At night he crafted handsome wooden pulleys for block and tackle and pored over his books and plans. He’d sometimes lay the blueprints out on the kitchen table and point out where my bed would be (it turned into bunk beds when - whoops!- my sister came along).

When the boat was finished, he said, he and my mom would pull me out of school (I always remembered that thrilling detail specifically) and magnificent adventure was to be ours. And he meant it; the proof was growing, piece by heavy metal piece, right in the yard. I may have been young, but the talk made me breathless.

When he got sick, I knew nothing bad could happen, because our adventure was all planned out. But that’s one of the things you learn growing up. Things just don’t always unfold like you planned.