MY LIFE GIVEN BACK TO ME

By Bill Coolidge

Staring down into the dark shrouded waters of Alameda estuary, I held my breath and slowly exhaled. The backdrop of dawn clipped the top of the Oakland Hills. Two coots and one cormorant were drifting with the outgoing tide. I could hear the megaphoned shout of the Berkeley coach urging her crew of young women to sweep their oars at a steady pace. Vaguely, I could make out a tug inbound from the Bay pushing a black barge up the estuary. My exhale brought little relief. This was my last day on the water on my beloved sailboat, Bele Chere.

My good friend Bobby would probably be at Jack’s Grill by now. Expectant, anxious, he would have the legal papers to sign, and by 8:00 a.m. he would be the new owner of my sailboat. And I would be on my way to the airport.

"Where my life was given back to me." A simple response to my friend Don’s question, "Would I be relieved to sign the Bele Chere over since I was now living ‘back east’?" It had taken me nine months to return, to step aboard, make some coffee, sit in the galley, swing with the surging tide, rock with the waves churned by the Alameda ferry.

A life on the water. For three years, my sweetheart Karen and I lived on the Bele Chere amidst storms, wind, sun, white sails, and evenings in the cockpit watching a panoramic sunset. Season by season, my body relaxed and trusted this new way of living. I learned how to provide a habitat for endangered species by clearing and fencing a football field of concrete on old runway number one of the abandoned Navy airstrip on Alameda Point. The least terns flew in and built nests followed by the brown pelicans. Both fly and feed along these estuarine waters.

Life on the water, at the end of the dock and a quick block away is the Alameda animal shelter. Twice a week, I would walk homeless dogs. Late on Sunday afternoons, I would paddle my green canoe around Coast Guard Island and wait at the western tip for the bagpiper to appear and play his mournful pipes at sundown.

Across the Bay, I worked several days a week at the homeless shelter in San Rafael. On a free afternoon or two, I pulled the sails up and headed west, tacking under the Bay Bridge, working my way toward Alcatraz Island. Returning with the wind, the looping white sails tugging, an extraordinary way to say goodbye to the day.

Riding my bike to Berkeley in the fall of 1999 changed my life forever. I took a class on the Black Madonna from China Galland at the Graduate Theological Union, followed by a class on Deep Ecology from Joanna Macy. Both told me: "You have to write."

The galley at daybreak was chilly, moist. I could see my breath. I reached for some matches to light a candle and to heat up some water. A simple discipline began. As the cabin warmed, I’d take out my yellow pad and start writing. For two years, in the midst of storms, winds, pelting rain, leaky and fog-misted windows, I’d write, sometimes seasick, but I’d write.

My life turned inside out. Long-kept secrets, hidden desires, fiery passions, eternal longings were pulled up by a black ink pen. I was humbled and thrilled. Then came the rejection slips. But then, to my surprise, came the acceptances, and I became a writer. When those self-addressed rejection slips arrived in my slot, I gave myself until dinner to be mad or disappointed. But then, while cooking dinner, waiting for my sweetheart to return to the boat, the sour mood was dispelled.

Writing through the broken places, the sites of humiliation, the moments of despair, the sinewed fabrics of grief strangely and mysteriously slowed me down. Sitting in the galley, staring at word after word at the end of the morning was like watching a life forbidden unfold, unjudged, held between flickering candle, rocking boat, and with a mysterious trust, until then, unknown to me. Like the tide returning, my life was coming back, fully, powerfully, anew. I was awed.

After writing, I’d have to go for a long bike ride, a run, a walk downtown. Gulping air, sucking in the oxygen, exhaling, often with a long moan. Not a grieving but a releasing of some long held, pocketed pain.

What would it be like to give over this gift of a sailboat? An old, heavy, wide-berthed teak and fiberglass vessel where my life was given back to me.

For nine months, I fought answering that question until I thought I was ready. Now "back east," I write overlooking another estuary and another ocean. A three-foot square pine table, a yellow legal pad. A cup of coffee, a candle lit. But there is a change. I’m in a second floor apartment. Two bedrooms. Kitchen. Living room. Two bathrooms. The second bathroom is so big that I have set up an office in it, next to the washer/dryer. Files, printer, paper, envelopes, carefully slotted around the two sinks. Not unlike the galley of the sailboat. Home.

I waited nine months to experience the absence, the missing, the dreaming of setting sail for Buena Yerba Island; the endless conversations with dockmates about varnish, the dockmaster, the weather. I waited nine months to make sure I could write again.

A sudden shift took place when I arrived in North Carolina. I couldn’t write essays; I couldn’t sit down for three or four hours at a stretch. I felt like I was hyped, jittery, going cold turkey. I’d sit, stand up, grab a book, wash some dishes. I could only write phrases, images. A friend suggested that I might be writing poetry. I threaded the words, strung the phrases, clipped complex sentences, nailed some details.

A poem a day. I’d sit until a short or long poem, good or bad appeared on that pad, Then I’d give myself permission to get up and leave. Do some research in the local library about Harker’s Island boat building, get on my bike and go grocery shopping. I had to drop out of my writing group because they were writing non-fiction, not poems. I felt lost, not sure of my ground.

First, I had left my boat in San Francisco Bay; now I had to separate myself from writing essays. It felt like my body hadn’t caught up with the coastal move. Settling in was going to take some time.

After Christmas, I watched some dolphins feed in the estuary. They dove, leapt, flipped, even the babies. Soon they took to escorting me in my blue and white kayak down the estuary and out toward Beaufort Inlet. When they first popped out of the water with the "whoosh," I’d be scared, then I would chuckle. I remembered my chuckles about the strange movement of the coot, the celebratory clicking of the least tern out on the Alameda estuary. Life lightened. I wrote an essay about the dolphins, then one about old wooden boats. By the end of February, I knew I was ready to return to the Bele Chere, stay on her for a night or two, and then hand her over to Bobby.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I went into the Peace Corps. They didn’t accept dogs and I had a black lab. I had to give Wheezer away. A good farm family wanted him and I remember driving him out to this dairy farm in mid-Michigan. He jumped out of the car, circled the barn, and then landed in the arms of the two gleeful kids. I drove back to town in tears. Later, I had to leave a log cabin I had built in the woods for a new job in suburbia. I thought my heart was going to break. Much later, I left a farm that I had purchased for a song. It had been an abandoned mill with a pond, barn, and farmhouse. And over the course of fifteen years, I nurtured and built and rebuilt and then I chose to leave her, green grass, spring onions, honeysuckle, swift running, white water river. Torn, I had to leave and I wanted to stay.

And now the Bele Chere. Bobby is waiting at a table overlooking the estuary. A container ship is going out, pushed by two tugs, one on the stern and one the bow, taking up the entire channel making the Alameda ferry wait. The ferry with the huge waves that would scatter my books and plates when I turned my bow into her wake. I liked that; making the ferry wait. Bobby drove me to the Oakland airport, we held our silence and then we embraced. He promised me "I could return anytime."

Already scattered about this apartment are remnants of the Bele Chere. A yucky faded yellow plastic coffee cup. Some smelly blue dock shoes. Black binoculars, an old Latitude 38 sailing magazine.

What I sense now with this geographical, emotional, and spiritual distance, is that the Bele Chere was a midwife for me. A sanctuary, small, teaked, windowed, vulnerable yet strong, inviting me to sink deeper into my life than I ever had and write as if my life depended on it. Tides and currents, wind and wave, rain, sleet, and sun kept me honest. I learned how to walk off-balance, write with a disarming honesty while rain seeped onto the galley table. Hold my breath while my sweetheart read the third draft. And exhale.