10.

STAYING AFLOAT

Rafts are good metaphors for life. The more buoyant the material, the easier it is to stay afloat. When a girl from Harlem spent a week with my family on Buckle Island, I learned that buoyancy has as much to do with attitude as equipment.

I have built at least five rafts in my life. Two of them were for river races when I was at Middlebury College. The first, made out of beer kegs, held four of us successfully until the corks came out ten minutes after the gun went off. The next year we used tractor tires covered by plywood. This worked well until the makeshift rudder hit a rock and came flying up over the floorboards, causing us to lose our steerage. Four of us paddled madly with our hands to avoid a trestle. People stopped their cars on the bridge above to watch as we bumped into the cement pillars and moved on downstream like a whirligig. We lost other essential parts in the rapids long before the finish line, but we still had our sense of humor as we towed our bedraggled vessel ashore.

The most successful raft I ever built was in 1963, when I was eleven. It was a team effort with Richard and Peggy, and her friend Gloria from Harlem. My sister Peggy had demonstrated an early interest in people from other cultures, economic levels, and racial backgrounds. She had spent two summers living with a family in the slums in Brazil before working in Harlem during the spring semester of her junior year at Milton Academy. I admired her desire to see people from the inside out, close-up.

While tutoring in Harlem, she befriended sixteen-year-old Gloria and asked my parents if she could invite her to Maine. They agreed and took all of us on the motorboat to Buckle Island.

This was Gloria’s first trip outside New York City. The prospect of sharing our island with a city girl from a culture different than mine filled me with excitement and anticipation.

Low tide found us knee-deep in mudflats, teaching her how to pull clams with our hands from six inches beneath their air holes. First we poked a finger down the hole until we felt the clamshell’s razor edge. Then we plunged our hand beneath the clam. The trick was in going fast enough to grab but not so fast we’d get sliced. With our fingers clamped around the shell, we pulled against the suction. This was the clam’s only defense except an occasional squirt in our eyes. When it surrendered, it came out of the hole with a sucking sound. Each clam was a victory. We washed them and examined their size, showing Gloria how each ring in the shell represents a year of growth. I noticed that the rinsed clams had contrasting stripes of black and white on their shells, similar to Gloria’s white teeth against her black skin. The mud was less evident on her forearms than on mine. We laughed at how our physical differences were no more than one clam to another, and I wondered how Gloria felt about being different from people around her. I was too shy to ask if she ever experienced racism or exclusion. I didn’t know what it was like to feel racial discrimination, but in my own way I knew what it was like to feel falsely singled out by strangers or excluded by my siblings. People’s assumptions often have nothing to do with the person inside. I felt a kinship with Gloria and I admired her willingness to jump into the unfamiliar.

The next day Richard suggested we all build a raft. He showed us sketches he had drawn of a sail with skull and crossbones. It was going to be a pirate’s raft, the natural sequel to treasure hunting for clams the day before. Richard found a hammer and nails while Peggy and Gloria rowed out to our boat to bring back some rope. We needed to find enough logs that, when tied together, they would keep all of us afloat. It was important that each log float on its own or it would diminish the overall buoyancy. Like connections between people, every log made a difference to the whole. We assembled a large pile and tested each one before lining it up against the others.

When we had enough to keep us all afloat, the raft was about eight feet square. This would surely hold us. Richard took the rope and wove it over and under the logs while the rest of us held them in place. Our effort was so engrossing, we were surprised when my mother called us for lunch. She and my father had been having their own adventure, building a low stone wall for a garden just outside the cabin.

We helped cut cheese, red onion, salami, and tomatoes to put on bread. It was our favorite picnic lunch. Gloria told us she had never had a homegrown tomato before. I wondered what new experiences I would have if I visited her.

The afternoon was spent securing errant logs that popped out of the harness when we pushed the raft into the water. We had to build close to the water to slide it in. Fourteen or fifteen trees together, even when dead and dry, make too heavy a load for four teenagers to budge without the help of water. It took many tries, but with the tide on our side, water crept up our ankles just as we were ready to float the raft. We jumped aboard. Richard first, Peggy second, then Gloria. As I was last, I swam out a little way to join them. The raft was barely visible on top of the water but did not sink. My parents heard our loud shrieks of glee and came to the water’s edge to share in our moment of triumph. We still had the sail, rudder, and tiller to make, but the foundation was built. We were more or less afloat.

The following day we stripped one of the beds of its white sheet. My mother conspired with us, donating it to the cause of piracy for a sail. We stretched it over the table in the cabin and Gloria and I held it taut while Richard and Peggy drew skull and crossbones in black ink. My mother had a good supply of felt-tip pens and we used up most of them coloring our pirates’ emblem.

That afternoon we erected a mast for the sail. It was not so easy securing it between two logs forward of the raft’s center, but with much effort and lots of opinions we finally pushed and wiggled it into place. Richard pounded some long nails at an angle around the mast to secure it at right angles into the horizontal logs.

The next morning we fashioned a rudder and tiller to the stern. I had found a wide board in my original search for logs that turned out to be just the right size for a rudder. Richard carved a hole near its top for a small tree pole, two inches in diameter, to fit through. This became our tiller.

We were ready to set sail and head out to sea in search of more treasure. There was only one small problem. In the two days since we had built the raft, several of the logs had soaked up water. The raft still held two of us, but any more than that and it submerged a good two feet. Maine water is too cold to stand in for more than a few minutes. We decided to take turns in pairs while the others posed as conspirators rowing at a distance behind.

My mother took a photograph of Peggy and Gloria on the raft. She kept it on her desk in New York City until her death in 1996. Its colors faded over the years, blurring the differences between the two girls as seen from the back on a slightly submerged platform. Above them a white sail with black skull and crossbones bellies in the wind.

Two years after Gloria spent the week with us, my father gave her a full scholarship to college. My mother often spoke to me with eyes brimming over about how she admired my father’s ease with people from all backgrounds and his generosity in helping them to stay afloat.

The year we built the raft my parents planted daffodils. The flowers have returned each spring, even though my mother has long since gone. Their flouncy yellow heads bob in the wind like little sails, each one bearing witness to the memory of adventure. My father has sailed to Buckle Island every year since my mother died. Sometimes I join him. We come to see the daffodils and to remember my mother’s green thumb. When my dad and I look at the flowers she planted, I can see her light brown eyes dancing with satisfaction. I think back to that summer. Gloria’s and Mum’s joy were as bright as the daffodils. I don’t know what happened to Gloria, but I suspect that she and my mother are still laughing somewhere. Like a raft, chuckling is a good way to stay afloat.

The Gift of Daffodils

A thousand eyes from heaven

peer out across the sea-blown field,

like mute trumpets heralding spring

on her beloved Buckle Island.

My dad and I pick bouquets;

white petticoats, orange kisses,

lemon-chiffon skirts and yellow trumpets

are my names for them.

They are my mother’s gifts

from thirty years ago.

Once a dozen bulbs or so

deftly planted by her hands

have multiplied each year

giving her permanent residence here.

Generations of her artistry

stand tall as my knee.

Such young faces recall her

concentrated frown and quick hands

loving the earth she kneeled upon

above the tidal rocks and sand.

And she is here again

winking her yellow eyes

abundantly

as we pluck her to our hearts.