My biological father, who I never met,
was a man of the sea, a Greek merchant marine. This according to the sketchy account
I was able to drag from my mother years after it should have occurred to me to
do so. I was in my mid-30s before I finally heard my “origin story.”
I wasn’t particularly shocked by the
revelation. My family has always owned more than its share of peculiar, dark
secrets, things nobody talks about, but everyone seems to know. I stopped being
surprised by these whispered epiphanies while still in my teens.
Don’t get me wrong; we’re not the
Mansons, or even the Addamses. If there are murders or witch burnings in my
family’s past, I don’t know about them.
However, there are secrets. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call them
mysteries, the flotsam of familial life trapped and then lost beneath time’s immutable
amber.
Divorces and second, third, even
fourth marriages, back in the days when such things just didn’t happen outside
of Hollywood. A husband going out for a pack of smokes and never being seen
again. A wife disappearing into the night with a toddler or two in tow.
A young bride running away from an abusive
husband, moving to the West Coast and showing up on her parent’s doorstep a
year later with a newborn Yours Truly in her arms. Which is more or less how
and when I entered the family history. My arrival was nothing more than an odd
blip on a radar screen filled with blips.
Finding out about my Greek, seafaring
father changed little in my life. Nothing, in fact. But it did explain some
things: my ability to spend shirtless hours in the summer sun without burning
(my siblings, Irish and English by birth, fry like bacon on a hot skillet); my
passing but intense teenage interest in Western philosophy, primarily the
Greeks; my almost debilitating love of life on the water. Especially that last
one.
Since the time I could walk, I’ve
been drawn to the water. If I’m near it, I want to be in it. I’ve never taken a
short trip to the beach; once I arrive lakeside, I can’t pull myself away. I’ve
seen a lot of sunsets over Lake Michigan and more than a few sunrises over Lake
Huron.
As a kid, at my grandmother’s summer
cottage, I would stay in the water until my fingers resembled overripe prunes.
It mattered not at all if the lake was cold, the day overcast or even rainy. My
truculence when it came to remaining in the lake was such that my mother (a
former lifeguard) sometimes had to dive in and drag me out, kicking and
screaming.
Her former lifeguard training came in handy on
many other occasions when I was still a toddler. If I spied water, I beelined
directly for it, always. The fact I could not swim and had very nearly drowned
on several previous attempts didn’t wise me up at all.
Though I eventually became an
excellent swimmer, my tendency to nearly drown myself was not diminished in the
least. I can’t begin to guess how many times I’ve fallen out of boats, large
and small. A dozen? Maybe more.
One night I was camping along the
shores of Lake Michigan (there was once a stretch of shoreline that hadn’t been
developed by condo builders, believe it or not). I decided to go for a midnight
swim. A cloudless night, the Milky Way wheeling overhead like a ring of
impossibly bright jewels.
I swam alone; I was all of 17 and
knew nothing could kill me. Each stroke pulled me farther into the gently undulating
blackness. I don’t know how long I swam; a long time. Long enough for my arms
to grow tired.
When I finally relented and turned
toward shore, I realized I could no longer tell in which direction it lay. The
wind and waves had picked up. I didn’t panic. Not quite. But I’ll admit I
struck a lot of bargains with The Almighty before finally spotting a dim
glimmer on the horizon – the parking lot of a state park.
Obviously, I lived, but it was a near
thing. And still, my memory of that night is a good one, just another little
adventure in a life filled with little adventures.
Do I feel that way because my father
– who never knew of my existence, by the way – grew up on the isle of Crete,
surrounded by the blue waters of the Aegean Sea? Or is my love of all things
aquatic simply blind chance? I’ll never know. But the pull is … strong.
And if it seems, dear reader, that
this column has no point, that’s only because you don’t know my birthday’s
coming up and I’d like The Lovely Mrs. Taylor to reconsider that bass boat idea
I brought up at dinner last night.
(616) 745-9530
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