Sea Legs

He is at the helm, I stand next to him in the well between the cabin and the captain’s chair. He is laughing, sunglasses glinting in the copper-penny sunlight of a late afternoon.

I am bending my knees to catch the bounce as we fly over the water.

“The lake is like glass tonight!” he yells, into the roar of the wind. “I feel the need!”

“I feel the need, the need for speed!” we finish in unison.

My dad takes one hand off the wheel and raises it to mine. Our palms meet in a joyous high-five, spray from the wake kissing our faces.

***

“I’ve never been on a boat before,” she says.

She looks so wee against big white bench, her hair swept back into a knot on the top of her head. Her oversize t-shirt covers her bottom, brown leggings pushed up to the knees in an attempt to cool down.

It’s hot, hotter than we expected. We boarded the vessel armed with sweaters, only to strip down to our lightest layers, she in short sleeves and me in my jeans. Barefoot, she braces herself against me as the engine turns over.

Her life vest echoes the orange leaves reflecting in the water of the bay. We pull away from the dock and she puts her hand on my thigh, looking for purchase. She pinches the fabric between her thumb and forefinger, a flimsy safety net against the black-green water.

We pull away from the dock and I tighten my grip. She is silent, eyes wide behind pink Dora The Explorer sunglasses.

“Are you OK?” I yell, over the noise of the engine, as we watch the boat make a hole in the water behind us, creamy foam splitting the dimpled surface.

She nods, whispers.

“I’m great.”

***

I haven’t been on my father’s boat since well before his terminal diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer.

But the bay and the lake and the smell of the air as my brother-in-law guides us through the rolling swells conjures up days when my dad was hale and healthy, reveling in the toys his hard work and success allowed him to indulge in.

“Tiny Dancer” was his second boat, a bigger boat. With dual engines and a large sleeping cabin, she is a sea-worthy vessel. Together he and my mom spent three weeks sailing through Canada one summer. They drank beer and navigated locks and gathered stories to tell us when they returned.

We sat on her bow today, soaking up the last of the indian summer sun, and I told my niece a story:

My father called me from his cell phone on their way out onto the water. “If we don’t get home in three hours,” he told me, “call the Coast Guard.”

A storm was rolling in, a bad one. I watched the dark skies from my apartment window and waited for their call, anxiously looking at the clock.

They made it home just fine, and I was furious. “Don’t ever make another phone call like that to me again!” I told them. “Next time, stay at the port where you are safe and wait it out!”

***

My dad wasn’t one to wait it out. That’s why he pursued such an aggressive, experimental treatment for his cancer. A potential cure that may have, in the end, killed him.

I did get another phone call, a call from the open waters of fear. A call that changed everything four years ago, and those changes are still rippling through the ocean inside my heart.

***

I close my eyes and turn my face to the wind. I hear my father’s laughter, mingling with the giggles of his three beautiful grandchildren as we dance across the glassy water.

Photo by my sister