Floating Father's Day
...Memories so strong!
His leathery tanned skin, and big dark head of hair, like an almost black curly mop on his head, is so vivid. His arms are huge, to a little three year old, like me.
I'm floating on this massive, to me, inflatable raft. He's holding on, as I am at once terrified and so excited. We're on the ocean, not the bay... and we never go there, when the tide is so high, or the surf so rough. We're little kids, my cousins, my brother and I, and our mom's only allow us into the surf at the bay, or when the tide is very low and the water is shallow.
Today's waves are easily over my dad's head, I'm too little to know, but thin king back, it has to be one of those days, when the waves are a couple of meters high (6 or 7 feet!) The water breaks on each wave and the white rough surf is amazing and beautiful, even to a little boy like me. In fact, the ocean always is beautiful. At 3, I know it is in my blood. I did not know then what that meant, but I do now.
There I am, soaked, terrified, and hanging on to this raft for my life... and my dad is pushing us,I wouldn't trade this terrifying moment for anything right now. It's only he and I, against the whole wide sea.... Something i had always been told NEVER to do, as a little kid. Something I had always been afraid to do.. and yet, here we were... floating off across the waves.
... on minute, floating and flying over waves, hanging on for dear life, with every fiber of my little body and the next, floating and laughing...And then, we're drifting, and my dad's soothing voice is telling me how amazing and powerful and scary and fun the ocean is.
He cannot talk fast enough and his eyes? He loves the ocean... and it's the same look he gets when he looks at me! This. This is it. I know what he means... I see the huge swells as we rise and float back down. I see the heads of seals, swimming a little distance away. Even out in the far distance, I can see tiny white floating markers of lobster pots. Gulls are drifting above us. The sun, baking down on us, floating on that tiny inflatable raft... talking, laughing and simply drifting.
I am sure it was only a few minutes, but it felt like hours, us alone on the sea, no one around us for miles, ...alone in the world. Just dad, me and the ocean.
Later, it was he and I, in a tiny Sunfish Sailboat. Or a tiny rowboat. Sometimes, it was he and I, on the 21 foot Snipe Sail. Later still, on the 29 foot Ranger. Later in life, we moved to power boats, but always, there was a time when the motor was off, and it was he and I, simply drifting.
Some time later, he was ashore, watching us from the docks, as it was me, and my two little girls, aboard my own boat. He was always watching, even later still, some ten years ago, when Fair Winds and Following Seas, he was watching from above, having left this mortal coil.
I woke, from my nap, aboard Blue's Dream, my first day alone aboard. I felt the little 3 year old boy inside. I felt that raft, below me, the Sunfish, Hobie Cat, Ranger, Kooklah Pooh, Blue Ranger and so many days on the seas, with my dad. Today I was all alone. And yet, I really wasn't... close my eyes, and that big, tanned, burly man, with the big Greek nose, and leathery smile, and huge shock of thick dark black hair, was standing watch, right by my side at the helm, guiding and piloting me in life and aboard ship.
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