I stood in the galley slapping together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my lunch at St. Hugh’s. Dad walked the length of the cabin and started up the companionway. I scrunched my nose. “Peew! What’s that smell?” Dad was full of smells, like a mid-Eastern...
I tip-toed across the deck, debating the chances I could disappear before Dad saddled me with some miserable boat chore he thought up while I was sitting in Sister Sheila’s sixth grade English class. I skirted the cockpit and ducked behind the aft cabin, not daring to...
I’d had my fill of Saturday-Sunday cruises, but my family nevertheless stowed fresh water, powdered milk and pasta for a three week sail around Key West and home to Miami on our thirty-six foot yawl—though Dad added the bowsprit and called it forty. Regardless, a...
Seven a.m. sun burned through the open hatch and baked my shoulder as my eyes blinked open. I rolled into the shade under the deck, the nape of my neck already damp with sweat. My feet hit the floor next to my swim suit bottoms lying in a sandy wad. I snatched real...
If chores built character, I’d be a twelve-year-old Mother Theresa. Today, on a perfect summer morning, I stood in Annie Lee’s porthole-less gloom washing last night’s marinara from Mom’s sailboat emblazoned Melmac. Fish bones floated in the dying suds, making me...
I crept along the deck behind Mom, fear of discovery quivering in my bladder as we played our dysfunctional family version of hide and seek. At twelve, I didn’t care that Nixon had banned TV cigarette commercials, particularly since we didn’t have a TV. Doonesbury...
