We ignore natural treasures in our backyard and travel thousands of miles to see another monument to nature. Living in Richmond, Virginia, a stone’s throw from the Chesapeake Bay, I never thought much about the Bay except as a vague concept, a resource to be protected, a resource that limited our backyard pool construction plans.
As a Cardiologist with five children and a spouse who practices child psychiatry, our days are often a blur of schedules and appointments. Struggling to make the kids soccer practice and be at the piano recital, has strangely made for a passive child rearing. Instead of teaching my son to play the piano (if I possessed this talent), we outsource our children’s education to others and then become an attendant at one of their performances. The backyard pick up baseball games of my youth have been replaced by organized athletics tournaments, and the parents role is to be the taxi driver, cheerleader, the purveyor of snacks. These are of course good experiences, but I had wondered if they are somewhat empty of the interactions that I want with my spouse and children. Am I missing the natural beauty of my kids?
Medicine is a wonderful profession. However, the “healing arts” are seductive in that the practitioner is not aware of the passage of time. All events at the hospital are urgencies, and the problems of another person’s heart often has time precedence to the matter of my own family. For the kids of physician-healers, an orphan upbringing, is the result of too many missed dinners and events. As a child of a physician, I wondered if my parents thought we were not as important as other people. Their patients were subverting our family time due to medical emergencies. One emergency is fine, but a childhood of emergencies makes for adult insecurities.
At the urging of my young son, we were abruptly introduced into sailing on the Bay. We wanted to do an activity together as a family, something that we have never done before that would make us interact together rather than be participant observes. The nearness of the Bay, and the beauty of sailing made for great project for a family vacation. Instead of the Dude Ranch, off we went off into Deltaville. I did not realize at the time that Sailing might become a middle age obsession for me and a source of healing and balance.
Deltaville is a sleepy town that claims expertise in all aspects of sail. If a boat cannot be fixed here, it cannot be fixed.” The main street could be from the play “Our Town.” We met Captain Tom through word of mouth. He is a tall, striking man who has a Captain Ahab quality. I think this diffidence is obtained because he is hard o hearing. He took our family of seven on a special project. Teach the egghead parents with their kids (seven to seventeen) and make them competent to cruise. I think he was rather brave to take on this project, especially given a time table of three days. Off we went off to charter.
My own sailing experience was one humbling afternoon on Hatteras Sound when I took my newlywed wife, our infant daughter, and my mother-in-law out on a Flying Scott. I reasoned, how hard can it be to sail, man has done it a hundreds of years. A hour on the water turned into four hours of agony as I did not put the center board down, and we were not able to tack into the wind to return home. Bladders bursting, we were finally rescued by the teenage boy on a Jet Ski. Since that time, I have been a Power Boater with a “head” on board. Thus it was with some trepidation that we embarked on this course.
What an eye opener. Never underestimate the intelligence of fifth graders. For the teenagers, the ASA course was a ho-hum experience, something that Mom and Pop thought up. They may have enjoyed the learning but it was not “cool” to talk about it. The preteens were open about their emotions, and took to new tasks with a gusto that was brilliant. I had the lowest passing grade, too caught up in my own preconceptions to learn new things quickly. The language of sail is a different dialect, a jargon filled cadence of humble terms. Left and Right have special meaning, and it’s great fun when Dr. Mom and Dad cannot tell left and right.
The water has special charm. Thunderstorms roll in from the distance, and life has a immediacy that makes our sense sharp. We are alive with our loved ones, dependent on each other to make it through the storm, and relish in the beauty of the afterglow. Captain Morgan and Coke has never tasted this good before.
To make a sailboat run fast, we must balance the sails. Too much on a windy day, and the boat heels excessively creating drag and weather helm. “Reefing” the main magically rights the boat, and your speed increases. Less heel, faster boat, and life is great. The fury of headwinds is transformed into calm when we hove to. It seems like a different day and weather system, but it is the same ocean, the same climate, just a different orientation. Running on a broad reach versus beating to weather is night and day, and a good metaphor for life and child rearing. No Chinese mother technique of Amy Chau. More force applied means more force returned. Going with the flow makes for smooth passage. The harder job is finding the right groove, the right Gulf Stream to hitch.
We have been sailing now for six years. Weekend trips have united our family. I have more of an appreciation of my children as capable people rather than my progeny to worry about. I am in love with my wife. As a “healer” we often tack in the wrong direction with our family. Sailing has enabled our family to heel together, and bask in wonderment of the Chesapeake. A common task at hand, mutual respect, creating self reliance and independence as well as interdependence, these are the lessons learned on the water. "The oceans do not discriminate"
and we gain balance in our own lives. Just as Ulysses found after his journeys, the most natural wonderment that we possess is in the beauty of our family. We should all heel more together.
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