Wilson

I have a quiet father. Not quiet like a rock, but quiet like a book. He is particular with his
words as if they were stepping stones. He is collected, not scattered. Firm, not flaky.
Resolute, not complacent. He relies on his few strong words to support him and convey his
thoughts. He never speaks unless it is more beautiful than silence. He seems to have his
longest silent conversations with the sea.

He is a boat captain, although he refuses all titles. No “Captain Walch,” “Captain Willie,”
or, heaven forbid, “Cappy.” He’s just Wilson; he is who he is.

I was five years old when we rented a boat. Her name was “Hotel California,” after the
Eagles song. She was 40 feet long, had a mast that reached as high as a giraffe’s neck, and
these sails that stretched like giant white handkerchiefs.

Many of my memories of the boat have since faded. I only remember the moments that
really counted in shaping my young brain, like the time I woke up in the middle of the night
because I heard my father sneeze upstairs. I later found out that he was keeping watch the
whole night to ensure that we stayed on course. He sat there, silent, stoic, strong. After nine
months of sailing as a family, we reluctantly returned home for work and school. Dad’s
determination to return to the water never wavered.

Growing up, my father sunburned on a farm instead of tanning on a beach. Luxury was
never an option for him. His jobs have regularly involved hard manual labor. His main
construction job would require him to get in his truck and drive an hour to work where he’d
sweat and groan and lift and pull, over and over, to complete each apartment. His body was
running on empty for years; the “check engine” light in his eyes and the lines on his face
never turned off.

One day, when I had a particularly hard day at school and he had a particularly hard day
at work, we walked to the beach together. It was the perfect time of day when the overcast
clouds hadn’t burned off yet. The sky and the water faded together into a breathtaking light
gray. As we sat there I tried to spark a conversation, recounting my day. My hands moved as
I spoke. Frantic movements, abrupt movements, flighty movements, trying to convey
everything. I looked over and realized that my words were met with silence.

He wasn’t listening to me, his eyes were closed. In that silence lived the roar of the
waves. I was intruding on this wordless conversation between him and the sea. They were
old friends. His reverence could only be compared to prayer. It was like a standing
appointment for a time in which they would meet again.

After 14 years of waiting and saving, that appointment finally came. When he got this
boat, he named her “Kokua,” meaning “the action of Aloha.” She was a 51-footer, a
catamaran with good bones and sun-bleached decks. The splinters could be ignored. I
thought her mast could pierce the fabric of the sky.

He bought it in Florida but he needed help sailing it out of the dangerous path of
hurricanes, so we decided to move it up to South Carolina. Our crew consisted of four: my
father, mother, brother, and me. It was our first night at sea and it was my turn to take watch
while the others slept. It was five hours deep into the blackest night I had ever seen. The
lights of the city were hundreds of miles to the left and too far away to interrupt the never-
ending void. This did not discourage the full moon, however. I snuck up to the deck for my
shift when I saw my father sitting at the helm. He was just sitting with his calloused hands
firmly holding the wheel. He was looking past the bow, across the blackened abyss like he could still see the horizon. I joined him without saying a word. I had since learned how to approach a captain when he’s communing with the sea. We just sat there and felt as the dark swells inhaled and exhaled. The boat dipped so low, then rose so high. It was like being on the tongue of some vast monster from epic poetry. This ambiguous force can both destroy and give life, but the unpredictability of it all suddenly struck this fear in me. As I gripped the railing next to my seat, I looked to my father. His serenity confused me, so I asked what kept him so calm. He explained the physics of a two-hauled boat. Flipping and sinking aren’t
possible. Where I saw it as a tongue, he saw it as a father’s knee bouncing his child to soothe her.

I could see his face with the help of the moonlight; he had a slight smile that was almost
undetectable in the dark. I told him I was happy to keep watch if he wanted to sleep, but he
just shrugged. We sat there together, our breathing synchronizing with the water as we rose
and sank. He was just listening. I was just listening. Nothing we could say was more
beautiful than this perfect silence.