Do You Have the Boat?

New essay. All true (or as true as a memory can be) except I changed all the names.

Do You Have the Boat?
 

            It’s 3:14 a.m. Did I close the safe at work? Brenda asked me to close the safe when I was done. Did I close the safe?
            I don’t think I closed the safe.
            Shit.

We were digging about 10 yards back from the surf because we wanted a really deep hole. It wasn’t long till dinner, so my cousin and I were focused and sweating. Another cousin ran by with equal parts fear and gloating in her voice: “Aunt Suzie is lookin’ for you!”
            We both looked up. Aunt Suzie was coming down the beach towards us. Towards me. Feet stabbing into the sand. Hair and clothes dripping. Eyes so locked on me that the rest of her body tilted forward to keep up.
            “Do you know where I’ve been?” Furious pause. “I’ve been swimming across the lagoon to get the boat! It was out in the channel! I towed it back by the rope! Do you have any idea how hard that was? YOU SAID YOU HAD THE BOAT!”
           
            Our cabin sat between the Gulf and the lagoon. The lagoon ran parallel to the coast, shallow and still for a quarter mile out till it dropped into a deep channel. The channel wasn’t for weak swimmers. When Grandpa, Aunt Suzie and Uncle Jim had come back in the boat at lunchtime that day, we’d all gone down to the shore of the lagoon to meet them. They started carrying the morning’s catch up to the cabin to start scaling fish and de-clawing crabs. I was holding the rope tied to the bow. Aunt Suzie: “Do you have the boat?” Me to myself: “Um, what does that mean, exactly?” Me to Aunt Suzie: “Ya.”
            One-by-one my extended family headed up the narrow trail of sand that led through the sea oats and viney scrub brush to the cabin. Soon I was standing alone with the rope in my hand. I was 11. The boat had been pulled several feet up on the shore. Did I have the boat? It looked to me like the sand had the boat. I dropped the rope and ran to catch up with everyone.

            It’s been 30 years, but when I wake up in the middle of the night, swimming in adrenaline, it’s not really, “Did I forget to close the safe?” it’s, “Do you have the boat?!” When I’m getting in the car to pick up my son from soccer practice, it’s not, “Oh, god, I think I missed his orthodontist appointment AGAIN!” it’s “DO you HAVE the BOAT?” When my daughter says, “Did you remember to call my piano teacher and tell her we can’t come tonight?” what she’s really asking is, “Do you have the boat, Mom???”
            And I don’t have the boat. I do not. Have. The boat. The orthodontist and his very polite staff know I don’t have the boat. The secretaries at two different schools know I don’t have the boat. My friends know I don’t have the boat, and they love me, anyway, I think.
            I’m getting better at letting people hold their own boats. But I still find myself with a rope in my hand most days. And many days, at some point, I look up from digging holes in the sand and find that the boat has drifted away again. 

I’m the one who swims after the boat most of the time now. And I’m tired a lot. Maybe I’m finally ready to let all the boats float out into the channel. That is, evidently, where boats want to go. Then, whenever someone asks me if I have the boat, I can say, “No. No, I don’t have the boat. It’s on its way to the open sea.”