May 1988, Part One

 Over the past few years I have felt a burden to put down my memories surrounding this cataclysmic event in our family. Perhaps it is because I am getting older myself and I'm afraid that my memories of this time are going to get thrown in the brain's trash bin before too long. There is only so much room in someones head after all. I can't imagine forgetting these details--it will be 24 years this May and most of it is still pretty clear in my mind--but that's how forgetting things goes. You don't even realize what you've forgotten because of course you've forgotten that you knew it in the first place!

I'm sort of a lengthy writer (I have a quiet internal editor) so I'll post this one section at a time.


This is how I remember the time that our family was forever changed.

Friday, May 13, 1988. My seven year old sister, Heather, and I rode our bikes home from school. This was perhaps the first time we had done this. Our mom was at home waiting for us with our 4 week old brother, Matthew, otherwise I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have been riding home alone. Born an anxious child, I was fretting about making it home alive. It was Friday the 13th after all. I recall thinking that if we could only arrive home safely our worries would be over.

I had just turned nine years old 13 days earlier.

The next morning I had a soccer game. I don't recall if my dad went. I don't remember anything about that game except that we won and when my dad asked me about it, I told him the outcome and he said, "Good job! I'm proud of you!" I'm fairly certain those were the last words he said to me though.

After the soccer game, we arrived home. "Home" was a 75 foot boat that we had moved on six weeks before. It was an ugly boat but my dad had lots of plans for it. We had traded our 50 foot yacht for this larger boat. The old 50 foot boat was named "The Heather" and it too had been a homely thing when we had first moved aboard 17 months ago. My family spent most of the first winter on "The Heather" transforming it into a beautiful vessel. I learned about "mahogany"; my hands learned to handle sandpaper. I also found out how leaning on a section of wood that was painted with stripper hurt like heck! I don't know how many minor chemical burns I got that year but I learned to watch what I let exposed skin touch. At any rate, after many months of hard work "The Heather" became quite a lovely little boat.

"Little" was the problem. Our family of four was packed into that 50 foot boat. And my mom was pregnant. Adding another person to the crew was a bit of a problem. I think we would have been fine to squeeze another kid in but I guess my dad didn't agree. Or perhaps he liked the challenge of a fixer-up-er.

I remember the first time we saw the new boat, "The Estrellita". A few months before "The Estrellita" became our home, my mom and I were driving over a large bridge and saw the boat docked there. We drove across this bridge regularly so I was familiar with the boats that were usually there. "The Estrellita" was huge compared to the other boats around so it really stuck out. It gave me the creeps. Don't know why, it just did.

Imagine my surprise when that big boat came chugging up our tiny creek one cold winter day. The vessel was longer than the creek was wide. I wondered where on earth the skipper thought he was going to put that thing. Well, it ended up at the end of our dock because it was the furthest out and therefore at the deepest part of the docks. That enormous, hideous boat was now blocking my view up the waterway. Which really annoyed me because I loved to watch the local boats coming and going.

"The Estrellita" was too big for our creek. Other boat owners made fun of it because when the tide was low the boat would sink into the mud and list somewhat precariously to the side. I was pretty sure we would  wake up one morning and find the beast completely capsized.  But that never happened.
About that time my mom was nearing her time to birth our new family member. She was planning on a homebirth. Being heavily pregnant on a boat is not a comfortable deal. I didn't realize that at the time but after being heavily pregnant five times myself I can not imagine dealing with all the stairs, ladders, and incredibly small spaces that are typical of most boats. Anyway, Mom never complained; she loved life on "The Heather".

Well, something got into my dad. He decided that he wanted that ugly big boat. He was a man possessed. He wanted to fix that thing up and head for the Caribbean. He made a deal with the owner of "The Estrellita"--who was brand new to boat living and had bitten off more than he could chew in the way of this big boat that needed lots of work--that we would trade boats. The deal was an even trade. My dad was ecstatic. My mom wanted to kill him (I'm pretty sure she literally wanted to kill him).

So, in a matter of one weekend we moved from our tiny, familiar, clean vessel to a huge, scary, filthy one. I'm pretty sure my mom was due to have her baby that week. She packed us up and moved us. I don't remember hearing her say a single thing that weekend but she looked incredibly angry so I steered clear.