I used to think I needed to record stories,
but now I know I just need to engage them.
My son Adam and I bought a sailboat this fall. Actually, I didn’t buy it; Adam did. I just went with him when he did the deal. He’d been saving his money for a while and had just enough for a nice rowboat, paddles optional. He told me one day he’d found an old sailboat on Craigslist that was twenty-seven feet long, and he had enough money for it. “How can you get a twenty-seven-foot boat for the small bag of money you’ve got?” I asked. “I’m not sure, but if he’ll sell it, I want it,” Adam shot back.
Adam called the guy, and they agreed on a time for the two of them to meet on the docks. I tagged along like concerned dads do, knowing that you can’t get a whole sailboat for a little more than the price of a nice set of golf clubs. I was going to make it a teachable moment, you know, where the dad intervenes when the guy doesn’t have a pink slip, or says the boat belongs to a “friend” who is out of the country, or part of the deal involves the guy living on it with his girlfriend, two dogs, and a llama. I was ready to explain to Adam that sometimes there are scams, and he needs to be on his guard for that kind of thing.
When we arrived, however, we found a really clean-cut guy with a big smile and a warm handshake wearing a plaid shirt and some faded blue jeans. The boat was rough around the edges to be sure, but he was down below tidying up and making sure that all of the life jackets were in order, the lines were coiled, and the radio worked. He offered us a couple of sodas when we arrived and said, “Yeah, this has been a great boat. I’ve really had fun with it.” He started telling us all the places he’d gone with it. It wasn’t a sales pitch; it was like he was flipping through the pages of a picture book in his mind introducing us to a really good friend of his. He told us about how he was from the Midwest and he’d always wanted a sailboat, so when he moved to San Diego a number of years ago, it was the first thing he got.
He was a research scientist at Scripps Research Institute, part of the research team working on cures for malaria, HIV/AIDS, deafness, blindness, and cancer. I felt pretty awkward and self-conscious as he described what he did, because all I’d done that day was edge the lawn. This was hardly the guy I imagined selling this boat.
“So why are you selling the boat?” I asked, trying to tease out any underhandedness.
“I just don’t have the time anymore,” he replied. “It kills me to let her go, but it’s just time to move on. What I’d love is to find someone who can add to the legacy of this boat.” He looked at Adam as he said this, projecting an emboldening Are-you-up-for-the-challenge? vibe.
Adam and I both liked that he said it that way, the part about the legacy.
“Is the price you listed on Craigslist a typo?” Adam blurted. He was tired of the small talk, eager to get the deal underway.
“Nope, that’s all I’m asking. It’s a great price that will only go to the right person.”
Adam stuck out his arm for a handshake and confidently said, “I’ll take it!”
The scientist paused for a moment, feigning a deep and skeptical deliberation. Then he cracked his warm smile as he reached for Adam’s outstretched hand.
Despite the glow of Adam’s pride, we had to acknowledge this wasn’t a new boat. In fact, it was almost forty years old. The fiberglass looked like it had been ridden hard and put away wet for several decades. You could tell the adventurous scientist bypassed frills like soap, wax, or rubbing compound. Several of the fasteners that hold the sail to the mast were missing. We pulled up the sails, which I’m sure were once bright white, crisp, and had the feel of white starched tin. Now, however, they hung limp like so many bedsheets from the top of the mast.
The two spinnakers onboard should have been labeled “bad” and “worse.” They would have made better rust-stained drop cloths than sails. The teak rails looked like pieces of driftwood with every third screw missing and the running lights didn’t work. We started the engine, and it coughed like it had been chain smoking oil for years. Down below, the smell of mold, must, and old gasoline was overwhelming. Through that bouquet I also detected a hint of urine. None of this mattered to Adam. What was important is that it was now his sailboat.
We had to get the boat down the coast to a dock we had behind our house. Adam had never been out on the ocean with a sailboat, which could’ve been a minor issue. We had a choice. We could either plan the trip or just do the trip. We didn’t even talk about the option. We raised the sails, spun the winches because we thought we should, and just started sailing. Anything else we’d figure out along the way.
The trip was uneventful and a number of hours later we were rounding Point Loma and into the calm waters of the San Diego Bay. If nothing else, the boat was brimming with whimsy. Whimsy was the gleam in our eyes; whimsy swelled the sails; whimsy swelled our hearts. That’s the way whimsy works. It’s a renewable, infinite resource that multiplies.
I’ve come to understand more about faith as I’ve understood more about whimsy. What whimsy means to me is a combination of the “do” part of faith along with doing something worth doing. It’s whimsy that spreads hope like grass seed in the wind. Whimsy reminds me of the Bible, too, when it talks about stuff being like an aroma. It is not an overpowering one, just something that has the scent of God’s love, an unmistakable scent that lingers.
Back at the dock, I asked Adam if he’d thought about a name for his boat. We spend the summers up in Canada and invite people to come and stay for a while to have conversations about how life makes sense to them. Adam’s usually off on the side serving, fixing an engine, or riding a motorcycle. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t steal the spotlight. The summer had been filled with discussions about the story that we’re telling with our lives and that we could be living a better story. My friend Don told him that. Turns out that these conversations had left a wonderful watermark in Adam’s life.
When I asked Adam what he wanted to name his boat, he sat back in his chair for a long minute looking up and to the left. He fiddled with his jeans some and then said, “I want to name her The Story.” I realized that Adam saw this tattered sailboat completely different than most people would. Most would see an old jalopy of a sailboat better sunk than sailed. For Adam, though, The Story wouldn’t be a sailing machine; it would be a story machine. To him it was filled with whimsy, wonder, and adventure even before he untied it from the dock.
Adam knows that I have a project I have been working on for years. It’s to write down everything I can remember from my entire life. The first bee sting, the first time I touched knees with someone I liked, the first time I flunked out of a course or got a speeding ticket. I don’t keep a journal or a diary, and I’ll never just write down facts like what I had for lunch or who I was with or where I was. Instead, what I’ve been writing down are all of the things I can remember that have shaped me, all of the words or phrases that have pinged me, all of the stories that have happened in my life. All in the hopes that one day, as I flip through those pages, I’ll see evidence of Jesus in them.
When Adam told me he wanted to name his boat The Story, I wondered out loud with him if he had ever thought of writing down all of his memories as well. What Adam said surprised me again. He thought about it for a second or two and said, “Well, you know, Dad, I’ve thought about that too. Nothing personal, but I realized that right now, I’m doing the things that other people seem to think of as memories someday. It seems like memories are what older people have when they think back about being my age when they could actually do something about them. So I think what I’ll do instead of writing things down now is just do lots of things, and then maybe when I’m done doing cool things, I will write them down later.”
I always learn a lot from Adam. I want a boat or a motorcycle or a hot air balloon named The Story too. I think we should all get back to building that rocket ship we dreamed of when we thought about what our life would be about. I want to be doing things today, not just flipping through crinkled and yellowed mental pictures of what happened a long time ago. I need my own vehicle to get there, though; we all do. That vehicle will look a little different for everyone. One boat size, one story size, doesn’t fit all. We each need to get into something of our own each day, something that will take us to a new place, a place that needs us. Perhaps I’ll name my boat Whimsy and try to untie it from the dock in my mind at least once a day and take it for a lap. Maybe you will too.
If Adam is right about memories being reserved for folks who don’t do anything cool anymore, then I don’t want to just collect memories anymore. I’ve been thinking I’ll follow love’s lead and find some capers worth doing, ones so saturated with whimsy they have to be wrung out like a wet towel to be understood fully. I think I’ll also have a dinghy that I tie to the back of my imaginary boat. I was toying with naming it The End. But I think I’ll name it Get In instead, because I used to think I needed to record stories, but now I think I just need to engage them.