He emailed my sisters and me a picture and wrote simply, “there she goes.” We have a joke in our family that his ships were our other sisters. He devoted his life to their voyages, their repairs and their temperaments. And in my youth it felt like he was more committed to them then he was to me.
My parents had decided to move to a small town in the Pacific Northwest from Philadelphia so my Father could start a shipping company with several other associates. They had purchased two ships – the Westward Venture and the Great Land from Sun Ship a division of Sun Oil – and created a charter line from Tacoma, WA to Anchorage, AK. The move would leave my two sisters in Pennsylvania with their mother. It was Thomas Aquias said, “If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”
My Father wasn’t around much when I was young. My parents had a marriage of simplicity. My Mom was a housewife who spent her day creating vacuum lines in our carpet and changing the sheets on their bed. She opened the windows daily – no matter what the weather – to let out the stale scent of cigarette smoke my Father left wafting in the air.
He went to bed late and rose early. When he was awake he spent the majority of his time standing in the same four square feet of our kitchen. To his right was a yellow phone perched on the wall that let out a trembling ring when anyone called. A notepad with his name on it sat neatly on the counter with a pencil laid perfectly next to it. In his left hand was an omnipresent glass of vodka.
He liked to eat late at night, preferably around 10 once the stress of the day had escaped his veins and the vodka had eased in. My Mother stood across from him in her encalve over the stove slowly preparing him his dinner and waiting for the signal that he was ready to sit down and eat. I typically ate dinner alone in front of the TV.
If a ship was in port, Dad wasn’t home. When he was home he stood guard by the phone, waiting for a call warning him something had gone wrong and what could he do about it. The Great Land tended to give him the most problems.
I could say the absence of my father was a direct result of the ships, but in truth he was from a different generation. There were no expectations for him to “raise” his children. He was a provider and that was his focus. He rarely attended my soccer games, never took me to a piano lesson and rarely helped me with my homework.
My Mother’s role and sole responsibilities was me and ensuring there was dinner on the table every night when he came home. She dutifully waited for him at the top of the stairs and greeted him every time he returned. I was to be quiet and meant to speak only when spoken to. I went to bed as my parents sat at the round kitchen table and let their conversations unfold over drinks and the occasional game of cards.
Over the years the distance between my parents grew. As I became more independent, so did my Mom. My Father became more successful, my Mother became more demanding. She wanted a life outside of the home. She wanted more. Their dinner conversations became more heated and what was once a simple routine became a place of fighting and resentment.
They divorced after I left for college. Neither my Father’s or my exit from the family was graceful. After years of fighting, blood drawn and feelings hurt we had had enough of each other. We didn’t speak for five years until the day I was graduating from college and he called me to say congratulations. My sister pushed me in the bathroom with the phone and I cried. They weren’t tears of joy, but it was more of a reckoning. The war that had been fought through my adolescence was over.
My father and I spent the next fifteen years repairing our relationship; getting to know one another all over again. Proceeding with caution each step of the way. He dated a wonderful woman for many years who was instrumental in establishing a bond between us. She simply didn’t have the context to want it any other way.
As I matured, I started to understand my Father better. To empathize with the challenges of doing what he did. Raising three girls, building a career and providing for all of us. I began to see his love and devotion to those ships. How his responsibility for their survival was intensified when they left the port. Just like us.
He isn’t a warm fuzzy type of man, but he is committed and he is consistent. Something that was so hard to feel in my childhood became much more evident as we both grew older. He had done his best, even though I had wanted more.
Dad loved us like he loved his ships. Comfortable and nonchalant when we were in his presence, but overtly concerned when we were out in the world. He is eager to hear my call letting him know I am making it in the world. That I am not drowning.
After building one of my own, I better understood his career and the sacrifices he made to build something from nothing. It made sense now how much he loved the ships. It had been his job to ensure they ran smoothly, that they could face any course they chartered. In the end, it was how he raised me.
He called me last week to see how things were going, “I haven’t been able to reach you on your cell, are you okay?” We did our typical small talk for a bit.
“They are taking the Great Land to Texas tomorrow. She is being scraped for her metal.” I felt his sadness. This was his life’s work going to scrap metal yard. His beloved ships were ending their days. They were being replaced by the next generation. Just like my Father was.
“I am so sorry, Dad. I know this hurts. You did right by her, Dad.”
“She was a girl, that is for sure.” Laughing to himself and remembering how she had given him so many troubles, so many sleepless nights. Just like I had.
He emailed the picture to me the next morning. An old worn ship being tugged on her final voyage. There was no cargo on her decks. Her hollow, cavernous halls echoing for the last time. She was old. Tired looking.
I realized I owed that ship a lot. It was through her, I learned how wonderful my Father had been in his own, unique way. I was going to miss her, too. She embodied everything that was right and wrong about our relationship.
“There she goes.”
