As a child, I rarely spent time on the water, but I knew a thing or two about boats.
In my child’s mind, boats were child-sized. Imaginary boats made of paper or leaves skimmed rain-filled gutters in the streets. Plastic boats fitted nicely into bathtubs or backyard wading pools. Even real boats were small. Fabricated from metal or wood, they crossed our rivers and lakes in tiny, buzzing swarms. You could fish from a boat, or go water skiing. Sometimes, you just filled it with people and drove it around, for all the world like taking a Sunday outing in the car.
On the other hand, ships were big. Ships lived on the ocean. They carried things, or fought wars. My great-aunt Fannie adopted Louisiana as her home, hung tire swings from her moss-draped oaks, rocked on her gallery until she became bored and then traveled to Europe on ships. So did great-aunt Sigrid, a mysterious woman whose accounts of her travels were equally mysterious; she wrote her postcards in Swedish. (more…)