When I was a little girl, I fell in love. Her name was Eileen Marie.
Bright white with sky blue decks, she stood out in any harbor. Pristine. A dove resting gently on the tide. She was my playground, my best friend, my home each summer.
I ride along from the shipyard in Tarpon Springs to the summer mooring in Bayboro Harbor. My brother and I listen to the radio and play cards on the deck, the gritty sand in the paint leaving red dimples along our arms and elbows. When we approach the Skyway Bridge, I climb the crow’s nest, hands shaking. And then I stand, sheltered in that strange little house in the sky, as we pass beneath. I am flying.
My father and his father built the Eileen Marie in 1982 at Duckworth Shipyard. They laid the wiring, the cabinets, the lighting. They named her for my Nana. I don’t remember being two-years-old, but I’ve seen the pictures. I watched her hull slide into the water. I witnessed her birth.
In July, she leaves. My father waves from the pilothouse. They will round Florida and head up the Eastern seaboard to Massachusetts. We pile into the car and my mom drives us to a bayside playground where we stand at the shore to watch her on the horizon. Bye Daddy, I write in the sand with my toe. I love you.
When Nana dies, her tombstone bears the same name. I stand beside her grave in thick grass that squeaks under my shoes. I try not to imagine what lies beneath as I whisper to her. I love you.
My father’s room—the captain’s quarters—had a little couch where why mom would set up a little playpen for my brother and I to sleep in when we were babies. He always kept grape soda and chocolate milk in the tiny fridge, and a carton of malted chocolate candies on the counter next to the sink. On a boat, everything is latched and secured. Bungee cord around the TV. Little rails around the shelves.
I am four and my brother is two. We play in the small, square closet beside the bed, tucked in between heavy boots and coats. The wood panels still smell new, fresh and sappy. We watch TV in bed, cuddled under a fuzzy beige blanket. The reading light casts a comforting, pale glow. Beneath us, the generators hum a steady lullaby.
Tuna boats can be easily spotted for the large boom and crow’s nest that set them apart from other fishing vessels. My brother and I learned to swing on the heavy rope hanging from the boom. Each year we’d get more daring, finally learning to swing along the entire deck by climbing onto the bow of the skiff attached to the back of the boat. Up—up—up onto our toes, one tiny hop, then legs clenched tight around the thick knot someone tied for us to sit on. We’d skim over the hatches, over the winch gears, and then back for an ungainly dismount onto the nets.
Once, both swinging on separate ropes, we’d collided midair. Someone had caught it on tape—two crying children slowly swinging to a halt to the sound of laughter on the breeze. After that, we always went one at a time.
I stand on my tiptoes on the bow, watching dolphins skim through the force of our cresting wake. They shimmer below the surface, dark bullets, and then break—silver and shining—briefly soaring. The sun beats down on my shoulders, warms my hair. The deck still smells like wet paint. It is early summer and I am twelve, buzzing and crackling out of childhood, joyful when my existence narrows these physical sensations. Heat. Vibration. Momentum.
A South American fishing company purchased her when I was thirteen. Defiant, hot-faced and betrayed, I climbed under one of the stairwells with a pencil and wrote my name on the painted steel.
I wept when we drove away from the dock.
Sixteen years later, on a whim I can’t explain, I type her name into a search engine and browse through results, half-heartedly clicking around until I see her. They’ve replaced the crow’s nest and she’s filthy. But it’s her. A continent away, an un-dated photo.
I hear the echo of the engine room’s teeth-jarring din. I remember the texture of the rubbery floor beneath my bare feet. The dusty slip of vinyl tablecloths in the galley. The taste of Tang mixed to a sludge and eaten like candy until my fingers turned orange. The smell of coffee and dried fish. The rubbery feel of the net in the hot sun. The ocean wind heaving one last, tired breath as a soft bay breeze. Gulls and rats the size of dogs. Fish as big as a car bleeding dark red blood and slime on the deck. Fly-swatter guns that didn’t work. VHS tapes labeled in my father’s neat, blocky handwriting. The Virgin Mary nestled safely in her chapel below deck, her pale porcelain fingers outstretched and serene. Sweet autumn grass. Nana’s fingernails painted deep, shiny red.
I miss you.
I wonder if my name is still there.