First Crossing...A valentine to my wife and daughter

"Memory is an accomplishment..." William Carlos Williams

Looking back, it was foolhardy.   At the same time,  it was the right thing to do.   April 2004, the kids were young, it was Spring, it was Virginia.  Why not cross the Bay?  It was Spring Break, and we had a new boat.   

The water was cold, we had no experience, but we were hardy.  We were skiers, and we knew cold weather.  Instead of Florida or to to Colorado corn snow, we trooped off to Onancock, our first trip across the Bay.    Joan looked at me with quizzical eyes, and gathered the kids in ski hats and jackets.   I did not really think about hypothermia or kid overboard scenarios.   We had learned man overboard  figure of eight retrievals.   It worked in Captain Tom's dinghy last summer.  We did not acknowledge dad overboard situations, but I was confident of my footing...



Onancock is a hurricane hole, almost seven miles inland on the Virginia Eastern shore.  The winds are fierce at the entrance, but the trip up river is magical, transformative.   It is a picture-frame like journey, farms and low slung houses are at the river's edge.  Inviting.  There are well marked sand bars.  At low tide, the people of Onancock walk on water.   We would return to Onancock many more times in the future, but our first crossing, like first love, would set the table for future appetites.

Our first born, Miju, is an incredible child as are all first born children.   She was born into the world when her mother was on call, finishing an OB GYN residency in Norfolk.   As Joan went into contractions,  her pager also went  off.   No rest for the weary.  Not to play favorites, modern residency programs make women and men take equal call even if they are in labor.   It is another story for another day.   

First children do not come with manuals.   Medical schools do not teach parenting.  They do not really teach about life anyway.  There are no "how to raise baby courses", and we do not need a license to create babies.  Keanu Reeves laments in Parenthood, that we need a license for everything except conceive children.  If we are blessed, the most complicated of all creations, the human infant, can be born in the most hapless of circumstances.    If we are lucky, our mothers help to raise them.  If we are fortunate, our children also raise us.


At the birthing,  I was helpless.    The world compressed into the room.  There was only the hospital bed, the sweet sweaty forehead of my love who was in labor.  Lamaze classes seemed like an old sermon gone awry.  Where was the painless delivery?  Let there be pharmaceuticals!

Miju seemed more surprised then scared when she entered the world.  She looked around, and her countenance implied, "Well I am supposed to cry...".   She looked wise.     She was beautiful.    Her head was made oblong by the birth canal, but her lips were  perfectly formed.   Her mother's estrogen was shaping her femaleness.    

I was an intern at that time at the Medical College of Virginia, and commuting the 90 miles door to door from Norfolk and Richmond.   Newly wed,  my first and only job, first kid, I really did not know any better.  It did not seem daunting to be on call at the hospital every third night, work through the day, and drive back home.   Fritos kept me awake on I-64.  I got fat but I was happy.


The lights over Newport News shipyards were my friend.  The Salt Ponds and Willoughby Bay beckoned.    People boating on the water seemed like alien species compared to my life.    "Oh brave new world that had such people in it.". How wondrous they were basking in the low light of the afternoon.   Barbecuing off the stern, the breezes waifing the smoke away.    I meandered into another lane, as I strained my neck to catch the last glimpse,  before being swallowed by the Hampton Roads Tunnel.


Everyone dreams of the next step, the next grade, the next opportunity.   In the flurry of the moment, I could not really look forward to finishing training or moving up the hierachary of medicine.   Each day was formative and exciting and tiring.    Miju was a great sleeper and seldom cried at night.  Even if she did, it would fall on deaf ears, as both Joan and I were exhausted.   But the glimpses of the people at leisure, on the water, living in the moment, would tickle my subconscious.  

I look at those days like a blurr, and wonder how we got through it all.   I wonder how we had five kids, but cannot fathom life without each one.   We cannot sleep until the last kid is home.  Even when they are away, our final thoughts are their well being.  They are just as vital to us as air and breath.  My father once told me that a parent's love and longing is not reciprocal.  I did not understand until I too became a dad.

Just as we neared Onancock  sound, the winds built to  20 knots, the weather helm rose over 20 degrees, the boat heeled, our lunch innards shifted, and Miju, now an astute teenager,  suggested calmly,  "let's reef  dad."




Reef we did, and the gray sky  was less menacing.    Song of the Wind righted herself.   Speed increased.  Water rushed by, but it was father away.  Sometimes, we are forced into situations by forces beyond our control.   We take the wrong fork and find ourselves on the black diamond slopes instead of the friendly greens.   We do need a little of luck and fortitude, but we need more an open mind and a will to accept changes.   How we get down from the steep slippery slopes can shape us,  just as the situations that got us there. We need to listen to our kids just as our kids need to heed our advice.

Onnanock wharf gave us a souvenir, a new shape to our Delta-imitation anchor, as we kissed the piling a little too vigorously.    A lesson well learned.     As we walked the town, the Charlotte Hotel was just forming it's reputation and the fancy Bizzottos Gallery Cafe was empty of clients.  When asked, how do you stay in business, the surprised owner asked us to come back in summer when it would be most difficult to get a reservation.  These are two wonderful places to treasure and to return to anytime of year.

Crossing the Bay, out of land sight for a while, is a journey of hope and promise.   A hope that the winds are fair, and a promise of landfall with delightful gastronomic adventures.   We have traveled to Onancock by car, but it is not the same.   The same meal is less delicious.


Experiences need not be dangerous or frighting to be in our long memories.  Accomplishment does however entail some hardship.  Being a father,  I want life easier and better for my children.   The difficulty is how to raise resilient people without causing too much hardship.  How do we given them confidence without foolhardiness.  How do we teach them when to reef the sails?  How to cultivate meaningful love?

The answer just might be in listening to our children and forging a common strategy.  I wish it were more simple. 


"The child is the father of man."  --William Wordsworth