Nothing But Blue

by Diane Lowman

“Hi, Klube!” he said, “How are you? We miss you. It’s great to hear your voice. When will you be in New York?”

  The nickname “Klube” came from a long-forgotten restaurant on 23rd Street that he would pass on his way to work at Metropolitan Life, where he’d worked for twenty-five years. The restaurant had changed hands over the years, but by that time the latest owner had removed layers of paint to reveal the original sign. KLUBE shone through again, dark green lettering outlined in gold painted on glass just over the door. He just liked the sound of the word, and the term of endearment stuck.

  My mom seemed to have disappeared momentarily. When he took a breath, she said, “Are you okay, my honey?” So much simpler. One question at a time.

  “Yes, I’m good. I’m in Charleston. I didn’t know we were stopping here. I’m so glad to be back on the East Coast and to hear your voices. You have no idea.” I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t cry. I dug my nails into my left palm to stem the tears.

  “Are you going into Charleston?” my dad asked. “It’s a great town. Take advantage of being there. See if you can get in. Maybe you can go on a tour, you know, get an overview, a lay of the land.” If my mom had been next to him, she would have nudged him or pantomimed for him to zip it, but again, it was hard for her to get a word in.

  I wanted to say, For God’s sake, Dad, I’ve just sailed halfway around the world and back. I think I can skip one city, but instead I said, “I’m not sure. We don’t have much time here. We will unload very quickly. How is everyone? Is Suzanne there?”

  I could hear movement—my mother must have lifted up her elbow. “Suzanne, Suzanne! Your sister is on the phone. She’s in South Carolina!” Surely Suzanne was still asleep, and a gentle tap on the shoulder might have been more effective, but it was nice to hear the excitement in my mother’s voice.

  “How are you, my honey?” she asked again. “You know you can come home earlier if you want, now that you’re so close.”

  “I’m good, Mom. I love you. I’m okay. Thank you, but it will only be a few days more.”

  “We love you, too. She’s okay, Barbara,” said my dad. “It will only be a few more days. When will you be in New York?”

  “Well, we have Halifax and then Boston after this. It just depends on when we can dock and how long it takes them to unload. If I’ve learned one thing about ship schedules, it’s how unpredictable they are. Maybe Thursday or Friday.”

  “Thursday would be better. There will be so much traffic on Friday,” he said.

  As if I could control that. I thought, Sure, let me just chat with Herr Kapitän Beucking and explain that it’d be more convenient for you if we could arrange to dock on Thursday. Instead I said, “I have no control over the ship, Dad.” He liked to have control over everything. I would not be at all surprised if he called Mr. Williams to ask if he could speed things along. Not so much that he wanted to see me a day earlier. He wanted to manipulate the operations of a gargantuan container ship and four ports to make his ride down Route I78 West smoother.

  “I know, I know, honey. I hope you have a chance to get out and see Halifax, too. It’s supposed to be beautiful.” I’ll add that to my agenda, I thought.

  “Diane!” my sister said. How nice to hear someone use my given name rather than calling me “Fraulein Meyer.” I could see her snuggled up under the covers with my mother. With all the windows open, the lake air cooled the cabin and made air conditioning unnecessary. “How is it?” She sounded sleepy, too.

  “I’m great. How are you? I’ll tell you all about it when I see you in a few days. I can’t wait to see you. How were the Navajos?”

  “Great. . . .”

  “Okay, honey. We can’t wait to catch up with you when you get home. Call us as soon as you know when you’ll arrive. We love you,” said Dad. I knew he didn’t want to run up phone charges. Collect calls were expensive.

  “I love you guys too. I can’t wait to see everyone.”

  I hung up. I stood for a moment with my hand on the receiver and my back to the guys to make sure I wouldn’t cry. There was so much I wanted to tell them. I didn’t even know where I’d start.

  I could feel the southern beaux staring at my back, curious but not wanting to intrude.

  “Thanks so much,” I said when I finally turned around. “Now, do you want to get into town?”

  I asked how long it would take and if they knew of any tours. We collectively concluded, and I think that I was a little relieved, that it might be too rushed to try to get in and see much of anything given the unpredictability of our duration in port. I felt a little defiant, too. I was tired, and regardless of what my dad would do, or thought I should do, in my situation, I just wanted to go back and watch the cranes cherry-pick their harvest from the ship. And dare I even think it . . . start to pack? I’d finished the collage and read every book I had. There was not much left for me to do.

  Without the pressure of conquering Charleston in a few hours, I lingered and chatted with my crush a bit longer. I had more fun than I’d have had on any tour.

  “Well, ma’am, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. We will have the distinct pleasure of escorting you and your ship out of our lovely harbor later this afternoon. We do hope you have the opportunity to return soon, and have a longer visit.”

  I waved at them from the deck when they, keeping their word, piloted us out of the port on their tug at around 1600. I felt quite satisfied with what I’d seen of Charleston.

  “Come, I want to show you something,” said Karl after we’d finished dinner. It was still light as we walked out onto the container deck. We walked aft, to the now mostly empty stern of the ship. When we neared the back, he pointed and laughed a little: “Our ‘spare tire’!” I looked down to see what I could not when he’d given me the tour of the belly of the beast that I’d developed such deep respect and affection for. I had no idea, but we had a spare propeller on board. It was, as I wrote in my journal, “humungous.” The gleaming, razor-sharp blades could split one of my split ends several times over with ease. I had no idea how they’d switch it out if they had to, but I supposed it would have been easier than awaiting a new one from Germany. Like a guardian angel that I hadn’t known had been there, it would have rescued us.

  The Atlantic got greener and greener as we made our way north. The Emerald City . . . my ticket home. This water had wrapped me in an ever-constant yet ever-changing womb for this whole trip.

  How odd it was to be on this immense ship, and yet to have felt so contained by my cabin, my gender, my language. And to be dwarfed by the unimaginably more immense ocean. It had changed my perspective forever. Life on a floating village, made diminutive by the infinite liquid surrounding it that contains most of the earth’s life, at once imprisoned and liberated me. I wondered if I could ever explain this to anyone at home, or if I’d even try.

  I thought about the people I’d met in Australia and New Zealand, about all the people I’d left at home. A landlubber is someone unfamiliar with the seafaring life, but I understood it as so much more. The globe appeared to me more as an astronaut would see it from space: dots of light strung together showing where much of the population clings to a coastline—to terra firma—to little bits of land and contained lives. With no concept of how minute they are relative to the vastness beyond their shores or their fields of vision. I could understand the once-held belief that there is nothing beyond the edge. Nothing but blue.

  “Mrs. Popcorn!” Ingo said, “Halifax today! Maybe you can go find a Canadian boyfriend!” Some of the crew had taken to using his new nickname for me; referring to the substance they claimed filled American boys’ muscles. They so amused themselves. I so ignored them.

  “But we leave quickly. Maybe two, three hours. You stay close by unless you want to miss your ride home!” He was still very amused with himself.

  So much for Halifax.

  Boston teased me, too. Rumor held that we’d arrive at 0700, but would reportedly have to anchor an
d wait for another ship to leave. We were early because things went so quickly at Halifax. I cared for two reasons: I had college friends in Boston, and I longed to sit in Faneuil Hall with them drinking cheap pitchers of bad beer. And our arrival time in Boston, by domino effect, would determine when we’d get to New York. I’d call my parents as soon as we docked. It was almost physically unbearable to be so close to home but so completely unable to get any closer any more quickly.

  We anchored outside the harbor at 0830. So close yet so damn far from Boston and from home. I wanted to jump overboard and just swim. It was better on the other side of the world, when home or something close to home wasn’t even an option. Then I had to just put it out of my mind. But now it dangled again, like a teasing cat’s toy: the Atlantic, the I-95 corridor, American English. I could smell home as surely as the popovers baking for schmoke time.

  At 1500 hours we still sat, again. I was tired of playing the Dickens game. The Great Expectations were going to make my head explode. Rumor—again, those tantalizing rumors—had it that the pilot boat would come for us at 1600, but I trusted neither these estimates nor the men who gave them to me. The latter reveled too much in my angst, so I no longer gifted it to them.

  We didn’t dock until 2000, too late by then to meet up with anyone because we still had to clear customs. When I finally got to the port office I called a few friends. George’s line beeped busy, and Randy didn’t answer. Then I called home.

  “Hi, my honey!” said Mom. “Hold on, I’ll get Dad on the line.”

  “So what’s the news, my Klube?” he asked. They sounded very excited.

  “We’re in Boston. They tell me we will leave here at oh six hundred.” God, I was speaking in ship lingo. “At six a.m. So that means around seven Friday morning.” I did not apologize for my inability to arrange it so that he’d miss traffic. “But sometimes we have to wait for a spot if another ship is in it, and sometimes the tugboats are busy, and it can take a long time to clear customs and immigration.” I was practically panting.

  “Listen to you,” said Dad. “You old sea dog.” I breathed. I laughed.

  “I just don’t want you to have to wait too long.”

  “I’ll be there at seven, my love.” I knew he would. I had inherited my punctuality and impatience genes directly from him. I would hardly be surprised if he drove down at night and slept in the car to avoid traffic and arriving late.

  “And, Dad, can I ask you a favor? I’d really like to get something special for my boss, Herr Most, the chief steward. He really likes this German champagne—it’s called sekt—the brand is Henkell. If you can’t find that, any German sparkling wine will do.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll find it.” And I knew he would. I also got my obsessive and tenacious genes from him.

  “Do you want to go to the Drop Zone for dinner?” asked my mom. I loved my family. Food first. I couldn’t believe I was making dinner plans with them. That I wouldn’t be sitting eating brown gravy-covered meatballs with spaetzle and sipping green iced tea. I could hardly contain myself.

  “Yes!” The Drop Zone was a very inexpensive, very dark, very mediocre restaurant that served very cliché Italian food—all for a prix fixe. We loved it. I almost cried with the wave of craving all things familiar that washed over me.

  “Okay, my honey. Can’t wait to see you.” I felt like Odysseus. But instead of Penelope, my mom awaited my return.

  My last night on board was underwhelming. I did treat everyone to a beer, despite Herr Most’s protest. “They can buy their own beer,” he said. I ignored his grumbling and stuck with the tradition.

  I made my rounds to say goodbye to those who I cared about and who had shown me some kindness: Karl, Ingo, Alois, Claudia, Tim . . . and some of the officers. They all wished me well, some with hugs, some with handshakes. We promised to keep in touch, but I knew that to be a polite charade. I got my remaining cash from Herr Stuhlemmer.

  They were all busy making their own plans. They stayed a long time in New York relative to other ports. Many would depart the ship with me, to return home to Germany for a while before their next tour of duty. Others had a long shore leave there. My departure was a footnote for them, as had been my tenure on board. Not the monumental monolith that it had been for me.

  I finished packing the last few things and waited in my cabin. The completed, shellacked collage stood propped up on the table: the journey in a nutshell. I doubted that I’d sleep at all, with anticipation caffeinating my system.

  Before I locked the door to my cabin for the last time, I knocked tentatively on Herr Kapitän Beucking’s door. I was afraid he’d be there; I was afraid he wouldn’t.

  “Ya?”

  “It’s Fraulein Meyer, Herr Kapitän.” He opened the door.

  “Ya? Is everything okay?”

  “Ya, ya. I leave tomorrow in New York. I just wanted to say goodbye and thank you in case I don’t see you. I really appreciate you letting me spend the time on board, I know it wasn’t. . . .”

  “Nein, nein, please Fraulein. Nicht. It was nothing. It was a pleasure to have you travel with us. I hope you have enjoyed our ship.” He bowed his head slightly, took my hand in both of his, and shook it firmly.

  “Good luck to you.”

  “Danke. Gute Nacht.”

  Why was the ocean blue? Was I blue? According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “The ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in the red part of the light spectrum. Like a filter, this leaves behind colors in the blue part of the light spectrum to see.” (www.oceanservice.noaa.gov)

  This ocean had tried to swallow me, too. To drown me in its depth and absorb my colors to prevent my full spectrum of light from shining. At times I felt the tug of the undertow allowing only the blue to rise. But like the ship, her defiant crimson shining above the surface and not succumbing to the pull, I’d managed to stay afloat too.

  She wore her red like that eponymous badge of courage, and so, I would too. My colors would radiate like those of the myriad rainbows that rose above the water and graced the horizon during the journey.

  Disembarkation

  August 17, 1979

  40.685649N, 74.07154W

  They finally let Dad on board to pack me up and whisk me off after a nearly three-hour customs delay. The gargantuan red TS Columbus Australia, on which I’d just spent eleven weeks, dwarfed his British green VW Karman Ghia parked just at the base of the ramp. The green against the red evoked Christmas, even though it was hot, humid mid-August. I hung over the same railing looking down on him that the sailors had hung over watching me the day I arrived.

  Herr Most appeared in the hallway just before we disembarked, like Peter Lorrie skulking around Rick’s Café American in Casablanca. “Psst,” whispered this stoic, stern, buttoned-up boss of mine. I’d been looking for him all morning. “Auf weidersehen,” he said, as he embraced me. I handed him the Henkell. And wait; was that a tear in the corner of one eye? “Good luck to you, Fraulein Meyer.”

  And as I prepared to go ashore, onto this dry land I’d longed for since the minute I left it, warm salt water sprung to mine, too. “Danke, danke, for everything.”

  “Ya, ya,” he said dismissively. “You go now.”

  “It’s so good to see you. I love you, my Klube,” Dad said as we sat in the car together, his hand on the clutch-less stick shift. I rested my thumb pad on his flat, concave thumbnail—a reflexive gesture of comfort and affection that we’d shared for as long as he’d called me Klube.

  “I love you too, Dad. I’m happy to see you, too”

  And I was. Happy to see his wavy dark hair, acne-scarred skin, and tangled teeth again in person. These things that must have filled his adolescence with angst, but they ultimately made him strong. I could relate. My stuff crammed in the compact, trunk-less car, we pulled away from the terminal.

  “Let’s go out on the sailboat when we get up to the lake!” He said.

  “No, Dad, I don’t want to go for a
sail.” I was out of the blue.

  Acknowledgments

  Above all, to Marcelle Soviero, my muse, midwife, and mama bear—and all my bear cub classmates. Gateless Goddesses Kate Gray and Suzanne Kingsbury. My life support team: Suzanne Fields, Liz Greenberg, Jamie Levine, Randy Kaufman, and Stacey Sobel. Sally Allen for supporting and featuring my writing. And the community at SheWritesPress.

  About the Author

  Author photo © Devon Lowman

  Diane Meyer Lowman’s essays have appeared in many publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine; Brain, Child; Brevity Blog; and When Women Waken. She also writes a weekly column called My Life on the Post Road for Books, Ink (books.hamletlhub.com). She’s explored other forms of literary expression in nearly 1,000 haiku poems and many essays about all of Shakespeare’s plays. Lowman teaches yoga, provides nutritional counseling, and tutors Spanish. She recently received an MA in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute.

  SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS

  She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.

  Accidental Soldier: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice in the Israel Defense Forces by Dorit Sasson. $17.95, 978-1-63152-035-8. When nineteen-year-old Dorit Sasson realized she had no choice but to distance herself from her neurotic, worrywart of a mother in order to become her own person, she volunteered for the Israel Defense Forces—and found her path to freedom.

  Postcards from the Sky: Adventures of an Aviatrix by Erin Seidemann. $16.95, 978-1-63152-826-2. Erin Seidemann’s tales of her her struggles, adventures, and relationships as a woman making her way in a world very much dominated by men: aviation.

  Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing, and Survival by Leslie Johansen Nack. $16.95, 978-1-63152-941-2. A coming-of-age adventure story about a young girl who comes into her own power, fights back against abuse, becomes an accomplished sailor, and falls in love with the ocean and the natural world.