When he was in his 70s, my father was sequestered to home and a chair because of the brokenness of his body, worn down by age and use, by the scale of his 6’7’ frame, and the punishing exercise he pursued over his lifetime to work his weight down so he could ride his horse.  By 76, he could hardly walk. It was great effort to rise to his feet, even with the tilting chair. His breathing labored; his balance wavered. He sat for hours. I would visit with him. I couldn’t talk with him during the news, late afternoon was better. I would turn on the recorder and ask him for stories. What did he remember of the day his mother returned to him? He was five years old, standing in the driveway clutching his granny’s hand. What it was like after the war to have a new father, and be moved to Vancouver Island? He liked farm life, but the marriage and a pastoral life lasted only three years before he returned to his grandparents. Now a mother myself, these stories fascinated me: how was it his mother chose to stay in London and ship her children to the states? How she believed solace could be found with a new husband on a farm in Canada. How was it that I grew up with such a protected idyllic childhood, unaware of my father’s own childhood? How was it he knew how to be a father? To protect us in our wooded home, to encourage us to pursue our interests, to create safety so we could take risks.

And how was it possible he liked boats? The most relaxed I think of him is sitting aboard a sailboat. Early in our marriage, my husband and I lived aboard the wooden ketch Star Rover. After Kent was discharged from the Navy, he sailed her north to Seattle, a long and final voyage before he sold her. I did not sail up the coast with him. Sailing is not really my thing. I was living in the mountains of Wyoming; I met them in Vancouver My father joined us. He spent most of each day at the helm. I remember how his shoulders slumped, as cares seemed to roll off them. One hand on a knee, the other on the helm. He sat off to the side a bit, maybe hard to fit the length of his legs behind the helm. We listened to the sea against the wooden hull, and the wind fluttering the sail. His white hat pulled low. His expression soft. His blood through his veins like ocean tides. He drifted on wind. He softened into the seas. Comforted. That place calmed him, offered a solace apart from daily battles.

I had this myth of the courageous pilot of his father, but I think the courage is that of the child, in the hands of a woman not his mother, in a berth roiling at sea. The faith of a child that trusts in the sea—without the embrace of a mother. A baby that leaves his mother, descends a gangway with his siblings, delivered into the arms of grandparents. Somehow, that baby developed a sanctuary aboard a great ship at sea. Aboard, the baby was held in some kind of faith like what you might find when you turn yourself over to a boat held by the ocean. Shattered he would say of his mother, having survived the bombing of London, the death of her courageous husband, the short farm life on an island that diminished her, certainly her capabilities as a mother. Maybe the sea offered something whole to him, just a baby. But whole, and content, and bobbing on the currents, and trusting in the care of the ocean, surrendering to the force of the sea.