Part One The Birth of a Dream

Perhaps it is the siren of the ambulance, perhaps the detached notion of my burning body. Within the kaleidoscope of thoughts that are fading away one image remains: my red fireboat. As the coma slowly supresses consciousness the pain disappears, Father disappears.
For all that I am grateful. The fireboat is my lasting link to a reality from which I am insulated. It is a fuzzy world in which I can see but not be seen, in which I can explore the sum of my known, never transgressing that border of terrible pain. I am not lonely here, for once I do not fear. I am free to invisibly revisit the known.

 

Chapter 1:  Returning to the Genesis

The little boy is perhaps three, or is it already four. Born in New York to parting French and Belgian parents they leave an ocean’s separation between them for time to come. The boy’s uncelebrated existence has little meaning, only the pawn for one’s revenge, the token for the other’s conscience; yet their physical divide will one day become the genesis of his dream, the ocean a destiny of survival and healing through a most tumultuous course. Aunt Minnie’s is where it begins.

Aunt Minnie’s foster home

She is no aunt of mine and no mouse of a woman, but the authoritarian owner of a foster home on Long Island where I have been placed by social services. I have no memory of what came before save one image engraved in my memory, no notion of who I am or to whom I belong, as sole element of identity I know I am five for that is my only measure to the others. I still wonder what came first, the memory or the specter my nightmare, both elusively present, both the sum of my being. In that time I cry myself to sleep for sake of some tenderness I know not of; I want to cry, not for attention for there will be none, for the comfort it provides filling a void I cannot define but unconsciously know is there. I can feel it through my isolation, another reality I do not apprehend but endure as the youngest of the boys. I do not yet understand it is a world in which the fittest survive; there is no notion nor apprenticeship of family for here to belong is to dominate or be dominated by the boys living at the home.

There are contrasts that stir my curiosity and my quest for recognition, most notably a few girls living in the house next to Aunt Minnie’s.  The girls are different, usually huddled amongst themselves theirs is a world of gentle playfulness whether reading to one another or playing some strange hopping game in boxes drawn on the sidewalk. Less than a stone’s throw, theirs remains a distant world delimited by the perimeter I cannot transgress; instead I assimilate the contrast as they shy away from the boys now in their tree house. What is the nature of the invisible separation of these two worlds I do not know, why I am a part of neither I do not understand. The contrast of loudness draws me to the other.

The tree house is built in the big oak tree on the other side of the street, on the lot where there is no house, where I am neither allowed nor wanted, where I too want to be. Instead I sit on the curb and watch them act another world than mine.

I can sit on that curb my view unobstructed five days a week. I imagine I am partaking in their play, defending against the assault of imaginary forces emerging from the forest and mysteries that lay beyond. Then for two days a car is parked there and I retreat to safer ground. I know the car well, it belongs to Aunt Minnie’ son, a state policeman who comes home on weekends. He parks his car on that invisibly reserved curb spot no one dares occupy. As he emerges in full uniform adorning that large brimmed hat, his authority is unmistakable. With one last look at his chariot he proceeds to the house addressing no one. The imposing rounded form of his shining black Buick stands vigil to his authority; it is threatening, from the deep black gleam of the body to the shining chrome of the four exhaust holes on each side of the hood, ready to spew the dragon’s fire.

It is Thursday and the day before his weekend arrival. To my usual I am sitting on the curb, quiet spectator of what lies beyond when one of the girls having reached the end of the hopscotch continues her trajectory out of the last box to walk over to me. As I look up at her outstretched hand it feels natural for me to reach up. Without a word she takes my hand and we begin to walk across the street.

I shudder at her unspoken intention but follow. The opposite curb seems miles away but she continues relentlessly across this invisible boundary to the sidewalk then to the edge of tree cover. The perspective of the towering oak is overbearing as we stand under the tree house looking up but I am silently emboldened by her protection. The imaginary world the boys are acting out comes to a standstill; suddenly they have real invading forces to contend with.

I am not one to show bravado and cower behind her courage while their focus turns to the impassible silent culprit, one who dares to violate their space. I begin to fear for her, I quickly learn there is a difference in how they express their anger towards the girl and towards me, there is more than feigned ignorance in the study of contrast viewed from my curb. I don’t understand how she can brush off what I cannot, for beyond her protection I fear the threat of retribution for my transgression. I shudder as the fear is amplified by the thought of their reporting me to Aunt Minnie. Tomorrow her son will be here for the weekend.

In my silent panic I am grateful to this girl, perhaps friend, for transgressing this invisible barrier. As we retreat from the boys’ surge of angry invectives my emotions are too strong to begin to consider what I will do with this new freedom. There is no climbing up to the tree house, not now, it doesn’t even come to mind.
My world has just expanded as I am released from the notion of insurmountable obstacles; I know I will come back but for now I need to come to terms with what has happened, and worry about what might. I run back in the house and flee to the attic where I know I will not be followed. Nobody dares go up there for the access passes before Aunt Minnie’s room. It is my refuge; I escape there when the boys are hunting me, or when that other woman, her daughter who would threaten me when we were alone. She would know where to find me, I would endure then be confined to bed. There I was safe; the other boys would not taunt me under her vigilance.
I begin to ask the why my world is so different from theirs, why I am not accepted. I do not feel nor am I aware of being from somewhere else, I have no such perception. This is my known world save one image foreign to this environment, of being cradled and fed by a dark haired woman in a hallway. I latch on to that image and cry myself to sleep.

My world begins to change the day Aunt Minnie takes me aside to tell me I will be going away for the day with my father. I feel strange waiting for the weekend to arrive, not knowing what to expect of this announcement. It is the first time I remember a visit and the notion of father has little resonance. My expectations are more focused to where I might be going, to the mysteries that lie around the corner than to who this father is. Saturday arrives at last and after breakfast I am told to return to my room to dress in a clean set of new clothes I don’t remember seeing before. My room in the front of the house looks out upon the street over my curb now occupied by the black Buick, the big oak and tree-house beyond. Kneeling before the window I watch in anticipation the comings and goings on the street below, the girls are out playing hopscotch on the sidewalk while the boys rowdily make way to the empty lot. It is late morning when a man and a woman arrive. I don’t recognize either from my window upstairs but already Aunt Minnie is calling me down to the living room I have never entered. We are never allowed in that room, it is simply off limits and nobody even dares to see if it is locked. The door is open now as I hear her beckon me down. As I enter timidly I discover a massive hard wood dining table that occupies the first half of the room with chairs of an equally deep tone; a sideboard matches the table shaded by massive thick drapes. The other side of the room has voluminous leather chairs that shine like the Buick outside. Standing by the second of such pair are the man and woman I saw arriving from my room.

The woman has a very soft face that smiles naturally, my attention goes to her red hair, with a twinge of regret, I focus on the man. I am not quite sure what “father” means, somewhere in my mind it refers to authority, the image confirms the notion. Thin and medium size with dark hair he has a stern face I do not find inviting, but I am used to authority and go forth. He calls me by my name and presents the woman as Betty; she smiles and takes my hand as we leave the room and Aunt Minnie’s.

I don’t remember ever being in this car as we depart, but my attention is to the outside and where we might be going. Betty reads my inquisitive face, tells me it will be a surprise. It will be. The most extraordinary event is about to unfurl.

Soon we are travelling down a small road towards a lake. I have never imagined such an expanse as we approach the water’ edge. It is summer and there are rowboats lined up along the shore. My delight becomes excitement as we embark in one of the boats and I am shown a fishing pole I dare not take as each arm is stretched to grip to the sides of the rocking boat. The boat quickly settles as the man I am to call Father begins to rows it away towards the center of the lake while the woman I will soon call Mother explains and helps me hold the fishing pole with a red and white object floating on the surface by the rowboat. It is a quiet day with a picnic; Father says little while Mother is chatting away, perhaps encouraged by my occasional nod for I have nothing to say. Suddenly the little red and white float begins to move. I had been watching it with curiosity listening incomprehensively to the chatter but mostly to avoid having to look at these two adults, now as I hold this pole everyone’s attention is focused on me. Confused by this sudden change of pattern I tune in to their words to learn it moved because a fish was playing with the bait. I had understood the process of the hook at the bottom of the line hanging from the float but I don’t know what movement to look for with the moving boat that seems to drag it along. Father takes the fishing pole and reels the line in to discover a turtle has found its way to my hook, for a brief moment into my life.

It is beautiful green turtle barely bigger than my two hands set side by side. I imagine keeping the turtle as a friend at Aunt Minnie’s; someone to play with and share secrets, something the other boys don’t have. As I share my joy with Mother I realize that is not to be, she explains through my tears that I cannot have a pet at the foster home. Instead they promise to keep it for me so I can see it next time they visit. I am terribly disappointed until towards the end of the day mother asks if I would like to come live with them someday, it is unexpected and I wonder what it means but my focus is still on the budding friendship with Turtle, it drives my response.

Living with Father and Mother

Memories fade by will or wear, the turtle was not to be kept but I do end up living with my Father and the woman to become my Mother sometime later. I am now going on six living in cavernous Manhattan, projected into a world of normality that is totally foreign. I have no learned social skills; then again I don’t need any to watch romper room on the morning television. It has become my keeper until these parents return from work. Like at Aunt Minnie’s I have my own room. It doesn’t look out across the street but to another wall of brick, but most important, it is off a broad hallway with a table centered between two windows similar to the one in my room. At each end by the window there is a chair, the one on the right by the entrance to the master bedroom I remember from a past I do not know, the image of being cradled and fed is vivid, just sitting there for hours on end is comforting, providing a sense of belonging. It remains an elusive a quest with neither path nor answer.

I come to miss my world at aunt Minnie’, there is no tree house, the bullies are gone and replaced by one other, the Father. Once again I spend my days in flight for this new world is hardly different from the Aunt Minnie’s, only much bigger and more frightening.

My world is brutally shaken the day I am enrolled around the corner in Public School 69. As I walk into the dark cavernous building my worst fears emerge. To the left is a wide staircase that leads to classrooms, behind it a hallway to a walled recreation area. To the right a smaller staircase that I know leads up to the Principal’s office.

Fear has a new meaning in this world. I fear leaving for school where I am constantly pushed around and teased with my name “jeanpierre”. Why and how did I get such a name, to that there is no answer for years to come. When I plead to change my name to John, Father provides a furious refusal, retorts that John is another name for a toilet, and banishes me to my room as punishment for the asking.

Once again I am not allowed to be part of the world in which I have been imersed; once again I wonder why I am so different. I weave my way cautiously through every hallway to avoid the groups of boys who enjoy pushing me around, the worst moment of the day is recreation time in the hall or worse when we are outside. Here the boys play at who can throw the ball hardest against the wall, or me as a moving target as soon as I enter. As the ball smacks the tall inescapable walls with ever louder thunder the sound reverberates and echoes like the deep rumble of an approaching summer storm. Two of the three walls are blind facades of adjacent buildings, the third giving out to 54^th street is at least twenty feet tall topped with wires like a prison, I have nowhere to go but run and avoid being smacked instead of the wall. There is no friendly girl from next door aware of the abuse and who might come to my rescue; I am alone in this cavernous structure in the middle of Manhattan. I don’t understand their games nor do I understand their classes. I cannot read, let alone write.

My seat in class, not quite in the back, becomes my curb at Aunt Minnie’s for across the street they are building the Americana hotel. Before and after school I peer through the cracks in the board palisade to watch the ever-deeper excavation. I cover my ears as they dynamite through the bedrock. From deep below trucks climb the spiral road out of the pit and carry away their load as I rush to the temporarily open gate to peer down before a man shoos me away. As winter leads to spring the explosions cease and I marvel at the metallic framework of the building as it mushrooms skyward. From my classroom seat I watch in awe as the men amble along the girders, up and up always higher they become ants foraging about, I forget the never visited tree house.

At the end of the day I trudge up 54^th Street to round the corner of Seventh Avenue, there at number 853 is my new home. On the fifth floor a large apartment and the hallway that fits my mysterious memory from a time that must have been prior to Aunt Minnie’. I wonder when that was, who I am. Sitting on the white carpet I spend hours playing on the floor finding solace in the elusive memory of being cradled in the chair next to that window; the image still stops there. It is a very large building that occupies a quarter of the block with a side entrance to the underground structures on 55^th street. From the kitchen of the apartment there is a service elevator entrance that leads straight down to the dungeons of the building with strange corridors, steaming pipes and clanking noises. It’s another world run by Barry the superintendent. He is of Italian descent and somehow knows me. Later he would tell me how, before Social Services took me away to the foster home, he came to change my diapers when the neighbors complain of my screaming, but no, he doesn’t know of the woman who cradled me.

As soon as Father comes home the fears of retribution inhibit me. Without an audience for which he poses pretending all things with talent, he is sourly self-contained, anger bellowing at the seams that generally exult in denigrations. Never a kind word, I feel his need to lash out, and as soon as opportunity provides, for there is always something wrong, I am the recipient of his anger. Mother most often comes home late; she is an actress seeking to build a career and doubles working at the Horticultural Society of New York and as secretary for a doctor. She would be the only deflector of his anger, oftentimes merely because they have their own fights to consume. His invectives and lashings need little to emerge, if I take too much on my plate he invariably compares me to a maternal grandfather who after coming to America supposedly fed himself to death with ice cream. I want to think this man means little to me but it is key to the construct, a path to something else that is real yet elusive. My imagination carries me elsewhere, to an image of the past and the dream of another future, I realize I have another mother somewhere else, again I wonder if the dark haired woman who cradled me…

At times Mother helps bridge the gaps of my understanding, finally explaining that I have another mother. I have difficulty in understanding what she means by my biological mother, but then she goes on to explain what it means then how she had left Father and moved to a place called France. Father until then never mentioned her existence but from that point on he began to discredit her being through her own mother, supposedly living in an asylum after enduring trepidations. It will take me a few years to understand the venom and effort to vilify her and her family, then to realize his aggressively towards me, never having accepted her abandonment I became the lightening rod of his anger, the pawn and possession he believed to incarnate his vengeance.

Weekends and holidays we travel to the farm way up in the Catskill Mountains. It is a relief to escape the confines of the apartment that offer no attic in which to hide. In the Catskills I have my secret hideaways where I can escape his bondage taking refuge to my pond.

To the left of the barn are two fields then the forest. I jump the fence and run down to the far end of the left field, I have to be careful mid-way as there lies the charred remnants of beautiful trees, they were bulldozed together when father had the dam built, retaining the waters of the small lake in front of the house. As soon as I reach the forest I rush through the trees, pushing through the brush as the forest ebbs down to where the water seeps up to feed and quench a barrier of shrubs hiding the pond. I once met a deer by the water’ edge just as I emerged, a magic and inquisitive moment lengthened by the surprise. I freeze in awe but as I overstay the welcome she turns hesitantly, then speeds from the water’s edge before prancing over the smooth shield of granite delimiting the upstream side of the pond.

The natural dam of stones has been further elevated by the since abandoned beaver dam, a testimony to wetter summers. The runoff of the pond is the main tributary to the lake downstream, but here the waters are clearer, the catfish bigger and more plentiful. Sitting on my favorite rock I peer upstream where the smooth granite shield emerges from out of the water’ edge, it glistens as the stream makes way between the green patches of moss, its trail disappearing under the tunnel of foliage hiding its source. I sometimes venture into the lush green tunnel, exploring a bit further every time as I retrace known territory, lifting rocks in quest of crayfish, sensitive to the mystery of what lies beyond.

My escapes have a price as my Father comes true on his threat of a cat of nine tails. In his usual cold anger he obliges me to watch him attach the nine strands of leather to the stick, each one nailed in place with those round bulbous head tapestry nails holding the leather to the wood frame of an armchair, finally putting it high on the shelf beyond my reach. Its implementation would wait for the appropriate opportunity; the threat until then would be his instrument of patriarchal dominance.

The fear of his cat of nine tails is powerful enforcer for the chores he admonishes. Rock Creek Farm carries well its name, not uncommonly he has me picking stones from the field behind the house from dawn to dusk. My inability to read and write justifies my learning the value of hard work, adding to injury insult and mystery considering that I too must have the grain of mental deficiency inherited from some maternal grandmother. The inherent meanness of his character only shows in the intimacy of the family, when visitors or more often at the farm grandparents Momsy and Popsy are present. All of a sudden he becomes the magnanimous and the worldly, spewing out names and a heritage he wants all to believe.

Mother’s parents were German émigrés who arrived after the First World War.

They represent a generation that had lived through hard times and survived in hard working America. Popsy a baker by trade, soon settled in upstate New York with the help of an already established extended family. Now retired and ageing they are moving from Gloversville to Coxsakie to be close to family and farm in Earlton. They are attentive and concerned but father knows how to browbeat with a smile and obtain what he wants. They love gardening and the farm comes alive with flowers and perennials that at certain times of the year steal attention from Mother’s rock garden by the house. I am torn between staying and listening to them with their visiting friends battle through a game of pinochle half in German half in English, or taking advantage of the presence of visitors to escape to my pond and the woods where I am not to be found. I don’t want to be found, for there in its dark waters I keep mysteries and secrets I will share with no one. It is later that fall when I lose my companion, our Irish Setter Marquise.

It is a Sunday night in early November, first frost had come and turned the maple leaves to their natural red an orange tones. Hunting season is upon us with early and close by gunshots shrieking through the listless and crisp cold air. As the crows rise to the disturbance of the slumbering forest Marquise runs to find Father she believes to be hunting. Pointer she is not but the joy of the chase is too strong as she disappears that afternoon not to be found. I want to join her as she runs across the pasture towards my dam but chores abound and Sunday night is a bad time to cross father. Hours later when she fails to return I scour the woods calling her name to no avail. As daylight recedes Father decides it is time to go. As words spark between him and Mother I run to the forest and through our usual trails, again to no avail.

The thought of leaving without Marquise is unbearable but our pleadings are useless, he refuses to wait and we return to New York without her. The three hour drive alone on the back seat is the beginning of an equally unbearably long week alone in the apartment; Friday finally arrives. The New York State Thruway is never ending until we finally reach the Catskill exit and soon after the farm. As we turn off onto our road at the corner of Anna and Walter’s mushroom farm and all along our mile long dirt road leading to the house I expect to see Marquise’ long red coat dance in the headlights of the car.

It was a ritual to have her run behind the car after such long captivity on the back seat, but my hope is drawn out as the engine stops in back of the house. I am about to run and see if she is under the front porch where she once tangled with a porcupine leaving us the weekend to one by one draw the quills out when, through the open window a howl emerges from the woods. Her long drawn out moans were a lighthouse through the forest and finally to a dip where Marquise lays overcome by convulsions, soaked through and through by the fall rains. Getting her dry in the cold damp house takes us well into the night and in the kitchen corner Mother and I nurture her all weekend under father’s aggravated stare until, finally he accepts Mother take her to the vet on Monday. But her trembles only increased through the long weekend of nurturing, and Monday she will die of distemper. If a part of me accompanies her, Father’s window dressing is soon replaced with another Irish Setter, Lady, and through her first litter of six pups Nana.

We are kept far from the farm as the winter snowstorms that seem to turn into blizzards blanket the North-East for weeks on end. Mother is not unhappy as the farm’ old wood furnace takes cold miserable hours to start and the water pipes are likely frozen once again; seizing opportunity she decides to teach me to read. Dinner consumed and Father focused on his television, the arduous effort and tears of frustration lead late into the night, drilling into me the basics that would allow me to progress. It is excruciating, there is no logic construct, I cannot assemble the elements of knowledge, I couldn’t see an end. She becomes aware that there are impediments to learning within me that she cannot understand, perhaps fearing there may be truth in the image of debility father articulates to characterize my maternal bloodline. Unwilling to accept the logic of his disinterest Mother finally persuades him to send me to an institute for evaluation of my intellectual capabilities.

Our nightly reading exercises accomplished, Mother retreats and I face my nightmare. Father never comes into my room except to punish me, and although I know the cat of nine tails is on the shelf at the farm, the fear of it follows me through the night. I dare not sleep for fear the dream emerge. To protect myself I fold my sheet and blankets down to the lower quarter of the bed giving the impression there is no one in the room, then I carefully slip under the folded blankets with my left eye able to peep and keep watch of the door for as long as I can. Sometime later my guard drops, as sleep takes over the nightmare emerges. He then comes in with his cat of nine tails chasing me through the hills of ruffled sheets and bedclothes until daybreak. The nightmare will follow me throughout my adolescence, thwarting the bliss of sleep ever since.

Through tears and tantrums I finally learn to read and write, but Mother remains concerned with my scholastic aptitude. With the help of school pressure he finally accepts I undergo an evaluation in a specialized institute. These were early years of an emerging science, hyperactivity was easily classified under such categories as dyslexia, but the IQ evaluation would demonstrate I am more than capable with a score of 147. The testing means little to me, nor the hours spent in various exercises and constructions with blocks and forms that come naturally to my assembling mind. I have but one fascination during the days I spend at the institute, it is for a red fireboat sitting on a shelf laden with almost every toy a child might aspire to. It is an extraordinary discovery; my imagination explodes as I project myself into its world and a life of our own fighting fires on the water, living stories, battling dragons. My obsession of the object immobilized on the shelf does not escape the evaluator, the prize of my stay is taking my first toy home. The red fireboat entered my real world.

The years went by with no change in my relationship with these parents, invariably I am the object of my father’s pent up anger. Knowing the joy of my escapades to the pond, to punish me as they left the farm for the day he tries to lock me in my room until their return. It is high upstairs, especially for an eight year old, but as soon as they leave I muster the courage to jump from the window. It is on the side of the house with a gentle slope that drops to a driveway that winds from the front the front of the house beside the lake  to the barn behind. From there I can see the forest and before it the stream that flows over the dam down to Father’s lake. The call is stronger than the fear, I jump. The grass looked soft from above but pain of the impact tells me otherwise, I lie there wondering if I can move, never making it to the pond. As the pain subsides I want help, on all fours I slowly crawl on the softer grass of the middle of the dirt road the long mile of driveway to Anna Palmer’ who with her husband Walter has a mushroom farm. Anna had become a fixture in the family, alternately caring for me or when fights emerge between Father and Mother of to mediate a truce. The Palmers had emigrated from Poland and bought a farm on our Earlton Township. Walter built the mushroom barn but Anna was a seamstress by trade living in New York during the week. Summers she would stay in Earlton to take in holiday boarders who were certainly more attracted by the pot of rice pudding, rich in raisins and vanilla that was always curdling on the kitchen wood stove, than the mountain of horse manure that Walter kept for his mushroom beds down by the barn. They too would have their fights, and Polish can be loud when the breeze blew from the barnyard to the lounge chairs Anna would set up on the front lawn.

I already understood Mother remained in part for me, she would attempt to protect me until he made good on his threat. It happened at the farm. He led me to the barn, closed the doors and strung me up to a beam; hanging with my hands tied he played his cat of nine tails until out of breath I stopped screaming, then again and again relentlessly screaming invectives I could not understand. My hate would grow as the battered child overtook fear; my first retaliation is to cut each of those tails I had watched him attach. The next time he slapped me I lowered my head and rammed his chest breaking three ribs. That would be the end of the physical abuse for the small eight year old had maimed him and in turn instilled fear.

Mother and Father’s marriage is slowly falling apart and could not withstand the discovery that he was having an affair with the au pair staying with me at the farm. It was a brutal final battle, louder than I had ever heard. I was both worried and curious as I entered the kitchen in time to see the last of the Limoges china he cherished flying through the air, shortly thereafter Mother flying out the door. She was gone for good this time. For the second time a wife had left him. We are now alone with our Irish Setters Lady and Nana in the apartment and I take more and more time walking them one after another to avoid his presence. I had befriended a beggar who squatted the corner of 54^th and 6^th avenue, become Avenue of the Americas. He would stand by the big silvery steel mesh waste-bin next to the stoplight where I attached Lady or Nana and we would have a talk, I would confide until I had to trudge on to the 55^th street down the basement ramp and up the elevator to the kitchen entrance.

It is late summer and still hot in New York; to his usual Father bought bones from the local butcher and boiled these for hours in a huge cauldron. Afterward the bones and broth are separated, the dogs loved to chew on these at the farm and the broth is mixed with their daily Purina Dog Chow. He is at the stove, I am playing on the floor in simple briefs, the pain is excruciating as he pours the contents on me.

Roosevelt Hospital

Why am I hearing that siren again, where is my fireboat, where has the priest gone, where am I going, what is this light. My last memory before an extended coma in the emergency ward of Roosevelt Hospital was the ejection of the priest called in to administer the last rites on the boy they considered almost gone. I am now awaking five weeks later listening to Mother reading me Winnie the Pooh. As she sits to my left back to an outside window I study this strange new world. I am lying nude on a bed with another above me I do not understand. Looking beyond a wall of clear plastic lies before the inner wall composed of door and glass partition that looks into the corridor. Mother is wearing a mask yet the words she is reading flow freely through it. I recognize the passage of the story she has so often read to me before.

Mother had returned, he won, once again. As I emerge from the prolonged coma of five weeks to a new experience of pain, I soon understand why my body preferred to remain in its self-induced coma. I am isolated in an airtight room of specially treated air, lying in a sandwich bed in the middle of the room, they alternately have me flat on my back or on my stomach. Every two hours the team of nurses would pass through the air lock door for my treatment.

First a battery of injections, then a nurse at each end of the sandwich bed begins to crank. Slowly the upper bed descends locking me in while the human sandwich is turned over. Then comes the pain of separating the upper mattress from my body of open wounds. I am the guinea pig of a new deep burn treatment process.

Time goes by in my isolation, I see little of my father but mother is there at my side. I discover from her daily reading Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and mostly Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe that follow me through adolescence all the way to the story of the Dove and the encounter with a sailor who had lived a comparable experience.

The doctors are surprised by the speed and quality of my recovery, owing to Mother’s nutritional obsession and the fact that I was only wearing briefs at the time of the burns. I am soon free from quarantine and allowed to roam the hospital floor. Something has changed in my world, roaming the halls and rooms I discover there are others like me. With a newfound sense of discovery I sit in a playroom with others and share activities, it is all so new, there is no bullying. Some already know of me as the boy in the glass room, I think the nurses encouraged some to show I was not alone, I can remember some of their faces pressed against the glass window separating my room from the outer world; for the first time in my life I am not an oddity, I am one of them.

Spring signs my unwelcome release from the hospital and a return home. Here also my world is changed, Mother redecorated my room for the occasion, Father is mostly absent, travelling extensively to India and Pakistan for his business. His attitude has changed somewhat, it is not amends, nor ever an “I am sorry”, it is as if I have become a threat. One day he invites me to join him for lunch near his office on Battery Place. A taxi takes me there, lunch is a threesome. A pretty woman he is obviously close to gives me a lot of her attention, for some reason with his encouragement. I never saw her again, but years later he would showcase me again to demonstrate his fatherly image to another mistress. She was an executive with Air France, through the years I would see her at most of my departures from Kennedy Airport.

I have not yet returned to Public School 69 when Mother explains to me that they have decided I should go to France to meet my biological mother. I know it is heartbreaking for her, just as I know she considers it necessary for my own good to distance me from my father, but for me the expectations are shrill, images explode in my mind, will imaginations from the past come true, what reality revealed. I know I cannot share the excitement with her, I had never revealed that inner core of memory.

The months leading to our departure become thick with acrimony. Finally he begins to recognize the existence of my birthmother, adding that she lived in the “land of the mocos” without any further explanation. I have no understanding of what he means by that but I perceive he wants me to hate her before the encounter. I soon understand that I had never been but a pawn to exact his revenge for her abandonment, somewhere he believed his hostage was a tool of torture; he lost his leverage when he sacrificed me to force Mother back, he would lose it again to keep her, little did he know how his hate would blindside him.

This new biological mother is a world away. The dreary three hour drive to the farm up in the Catskill Mountains is now insignificant; this long trip in the Constellation airplane on its way to Paris is taking forever. I am not allowed out of my seat while a middle ear infection in the varying pressurized environment is giving me terrible pain, situation only made worse by Father’s irascible aggravation. As usual Mother softens the blow and tells me of the adventures to come and what is to happen when we arrive in Paris. These are to be my last memories of them for a few years as once in Paris I am boarded alone on a plane bound for Nice in the south of France, it has tear drop windows for those I am not willing to shed.

Freedom to Be

I am both anxious and excited to be travelling alone on this airplane, it is a Caravelle jet that in retrospect bears well its name as for me it is also called deliverance. Mother told me I was about to discover a world I never imagined, so different from the farm, its ponds and streams where I take refuge to find what I believe is happiness. She tells me I will live in a family with brother and sister but I am not quite sure what she means by that. I do not know what normal childhood is like, even less being a member of a family with other children. But mostly it will be my first encounter with the sea. It is a strange concept to imagine a pond with no other side in sight. I am treated like a hero on this flight, perhaps it is still unusual for a ten year old to be travelling alone, then again, I am not really alone, a stewardess is watching over me, listening as I explain I am about to meet a mother I do not know; her attention and surprising interest sooths my anticipation.

As the plane lands in Nice the sun is blazing. As promised the same stewardess prepares to accompany me to the reception area as soon as we approach the door of the plane I am smothered by an invisible cloud of intense heat, I can feel it radiate as we disembark down the steps then on to the tarmac and the short walk towards the terminal. After a few pauses before uniformed men with a definite air of officialdom, papers are inserted into the pouch hanging around my neck since Paris. The stewardess finally tells me we are done and she will now take me to my waiting “mother”. The crowd with me on the plane seems to have dissipated as we walk through the hall, scanning in anticipation I can see several people waiting at the other end.  A pretty woman with an inviting face is there to meet me with a fat balding man, and, two smaller children. I am prepared to meet a woman but not what appears to be a crowd of four, during the trip I conjured up from the depth of my consciousness that early image of my childhood I have lashed onto to for so long. I scan all around creeping despair emerging from within, I so want to recognize the dark haired woman who once cradled me in her arms. A wave of deception overwhelms me as she is not that motherly image I had cried for so long, somewhere within me there is refusal and my legs seem to want to hold back resisting the gentle forward pull of the stewardess. My fragile want of reassurance evaporates, these are foreigners and I have no idea of what to do.

As she comes towards me I feel none of the emotions I am expecting, which I crave to feel. She tells me her name is Catherine and turns to present the family behind her. The heavy set man and two children are expressionless, I am reserved. My guards are up. As the stewardess backs away signaling her departure a shrieking chill goes down my back, the last link to everything I know is disappearing, my stomach is leaded down, panic turns into a molten ball of dull pain while I repress the tears building up under my eyes.

I had already lived enough to know, to apprehend and to protect myself. My stay at Roosevelt Hospital barely a few months behind me instilled a sense of survival and independence. Now, here I want to stand my ground at any cost. My bravado is facilitated by the fact that only Catherine speaks English in this world where everything is foreign. Having heard my father converse with third parties in French I notionally understand the difference of language; then I was comfortable in my indifference, then as now I realize it provides insulation, I can feign to ignore. Instinctively I decide to ignore the others and only communicate with Catherine, perhaps in the hope that she is the iconic image in my memory, a key to my mysterious past before Aunt Minnie. I need this protection in support of my newfound confidence for here I am alone without Mother who has always tried to stand by me, today she gave me away for my own well-being, perhaps to find a better world.

As we reach the car in the parking lot I am astonished we are all going to fit in, it is a Peugeot 403 with four doors but it seems so small; I had always had the back seat to myself curled up with with Marquise at first, then Lady and nana, I feel oppressed. Luggage stowed I sit stoically in the back on the left side with the two other children who don’t mutter a word. Hugging the door the window seat gives me comfort as I can focus my attention on the scenery rather than stare at silence, before long I am totally captivated by the sight. I had seen a glimpse of blue through the window of the airplane but as we drive along the coast to Saint Tropez I am bewildered, almost from the side of the road blue sea extends beyond the horizon, here and there disrupted by sailboats and smaller colorful motorboats. Finally as we round a bend land appears beyond the blue expanse. I soon learn we are entering the Gulf of Saint Tropez as. Catherine sitting in front turns about to inform me the village we are driving toward is on the other side of the gulf.

As the road winds along the shoreline we reach the bustling village with cars and people all about, the car slowly advances into ever smaller streets stopping in front of a garage door, Catherine turns again showing me the terrace above: it where my room is to be. I am already looking at the walls wondering how I can climb down to run away. But to where I wonder, I don’t know where I am. We enter the house through the garage and a homely feeling overcomes me, a young woman is there greeting me in French while Catherine presents her as Louisette, she is the governess who takes care of the house and children. I don’t understand a word she says but behind a course scruffy voice she seems nice.

I quickly discover the house and finally my room, it too feels homely, painted in blue with two small beds with a bedside table between; on the opposite side from the door there is a window to the left and a single French door on the right that gives out to the terrace shown to me earlier. I quickly go out to finish my reconnaissance; it is less high above the ground than my room at the farm, a couple feet down to the right side a wall extends the length of an alleyway, a stepping stone to scale my way down. The daylight is diminishing as evening sets in, as I re-enter my room Catherine is busy unpacking my suitcase. I sit silently on the bed against the wall wishing the night had arrived leaving me in isolation and in my quest of sleep. A moment of panic takes over as I look at the small bed wondering how I am going to fold it down, I realize it is too small but say nothing, I have already formulated my plan, once alone I will push the two together and work it out, somehow.

It will take me a few years to grow into and appreciate the extraordinary world in which I have been parachuted, but I am already too happy to make it my own, I can ask for no more. In 1960 Saint Tropez is still a village that hustles and bustles a little during the summer months then retreats to village life before the first leaves fall. The icons of its notoriety are already here, from Brigitte Bardot to Herbert von Karajan, Marcel Pagnol to Larry Collins and many more. These are the discreet times when they sought refuge from the public eye, when they would assemble to share – before the cat and mouse games with paparazzi and tabloids, before the many would come here mainly to be seen. I am long unaware, impervious to all this, living in my own new world in which I no longer fear retribution, of having to live in the confines of what I cannot do. As my will reaffirms my horizon boldly expands, soon wandering out to explore the freedom provided, and with it, a reaffirmed level of self-assurance.

The jet lag compounds my early morning rise, the terrace is still shrouded in the night, a streetlamp down the alley glimmers in the cool humidity. I am tempted to scale the wall and explore the darkness but the allure of exploring my room is stronger. In the right hand corner is an alcove with a wash basin, behind it tall closet doors where I saw Catherine put some of my clothes. As I draw it open shelving up to the ceiling appears with all sorts of objects, some wrapped some boxed. As I work my way down I discover rows of thin tall books followed by my clothes. As I pull on of the books out I read the word Tintin, it is a cartoon book and I come to realize why there were two small beds in the room, it had obviously been the children’s room until my arrival. Perhaps the reason for their distance, I am the disruptive factor in their lives.

Pushing the thought away I decide to venture further and explore the house. Daybreak has arrived and I have enough light to navigate through the hallway that begins at my corner room. I know to the right Is Catherine’ room, to the left a staircase up to Louisettte’s room then the down spurt from where we arrived out of the garage; I already knew there were other rooms down at that level but it is dark and I don’t want to turn on any lights that might signal my presence.  As I tiptoe on I discover the kitchen on the left followed by the dining room with double French doors that give out to a small balcony, a spiral staircase feeds from it down to a vast courtyard full of equipment. I am fascinated by the objects that seem to change as morning light emerges over the rooftops, just below me a dump truck, over to the right a crane and all sorts of parts with varying geometric structures. I urge to go on the balcony to see closer but I don’t dare open the door for fear of making noise. I backtrack to the hallway to continue my exploration; the next step is through the glassed inner French doors beyond which I see another window to the courtyard. It is a very large room winding to the right as I go in, it is the living room. A large built in bookcase occupies much of the farthest wall, two large windows occupy the wall left of that with a beautiful grandfather clock between. To the left wall continuing from the courtyard window is a large fireplace with low bookshelves on either side.  Big deep armchairs dressed in dark forest green velvet green face a coffee table and deep wide couch similarly adorned with barely contrasting pillows. The couch is so inviting I lie down on my back to discover an array of objects and paintings on all the walls, dominated by one of a young girls posing. I am fascinated by the composition so in tune with the room when I hear a door and footsteps. Panicked at the thought of being found I jump from the couch edging my eye through the glassed French door, the heavy set man is coming this way and I retreat to not be seen, I hear him turn into the kitchen then emerge, the paces are moving away then the sound of shoes hitting the steps of the stairs. As I hear doors open and close I quickly tiptoe back down the hallway to my room and the safety of my bed.

It is not long before the house begins to stir, I hear Louisette come down the stairs, then from down below the heavy set man I will come to call Maurice return. Soon other voices join this morning chorus until my reverie is shattered by a knock on my door, it is Catherine telling me it is breakfast-time. The dining room I had explored earlier is a mid-purple color exploding with warmth in the morning sun. Before the open hearth fireplace a large oval table is set with all sorts of strange breads, an assortment of jams and a mound of butter as I had never seen.

Catherine explains the opulent assortment of home-made jams, from watermelon to wild blackberry and breads from baguette to fougasse and an early moon shaped pastry called croissant. I am hungry and happy to focus all my attention to devouring. The undisciplined mound of butter frees my father instilled inhibition to butter my bread, as the taste explodes in my mouth I add a layer, and more. As I freely reach out to explore everything on the table I feel emancipated, accepted, my silence rewarded with boldness found; Mother was right, this is a new world to explore.

The day seemed planned ahead of me as I am told we will have lunch in Sainte Anne where Maurice’s parents live followed by a tour of the village.  I knew that would leave me time to discover the lower part of the house and mostly the courtyard I so much wanted to explore. Breakfast over I am quick to my room and dressed. Then, unobstructed I work my way downstairs. At the bottom I recognize the door to a storage room and the garage but before me is a glassed partition with a door, through it I can see a large entrance foyer with the main door to the house before me and closed doors left and right. Behind me is yet another door under the winding staircase I just descended. Unsure of my luck to proceed freely I wonder which door will lead me to the courtyard. The one to the right is the wrong direction; the left implies I open the glassed door, the one behind me improbable but a safe first step. It turns out to be a large closet with all sorts of strange objects, from rubbery suits to spears, masks and baskets, I retreat deciding to save these mysteries for another time, the courtyard at all costs.

The glass door is an easy open and I am quick to close it behind me, next is a wooden door and mystery. It has an oval shaped white knob I had seen upstairs, I would have preferred a handle instead as it seems to want to wobble more than turn. With as tight a grip as I could make I grasp and turn it to a sharp metallic whine, the door is free but I fear releasing the know for the noise I anticipate it will make, instead I squeeze through the opening and grasp the knob on the other side. Shock stops my breath as a pair of glassed eyes stares at me from behind a desk. My fear subsides with the tone of the voice I don’t understand, it is friendly. He rises to release my hand still frozen to the inner knob closing the door for me. As my eyes scan the large room stacked with shelves of strange articles they lock onto the glassed doors to the courtyard. Mr. Carbonnel understands my quest and while he continues talking to language deaf ears takes my hand and walks me out. It is grander than I thought with beautiful machines full of mysteries all over, all of a sudden I wish I can understand what he is telling me. I drag him over to the crane I had seen from the balcony, it looked like a miniature of the ones used to build the Americana hotel, I knew I could run it but for now no pressing my luck.

We are soon back in the Peugeot 304 on our way to Sainte Anne. We make way through the village, past the Couvent where the nuns teach school to these other children, then up a winding road past a chapel called Saint Joseph to the top of the hill across from the Saint Anne Chapel. It is a big house atop the hill overlooking Saint Tropez, the gulf with Sainte Maxime on the other side.  The house is surrounded with five acres in fields of grapevines, restanques that start from the forest at the highest point of the property and cascade down towards Saint Tropez. Maurice’s parents are gentle and inviting but not one speaks a word of English. As they all converse together over the meal I am lucky to be seated facing the bay of windows and the view over the gulf. I am fascinated by the blue expanse and cannot wait to discover. Catherine tells me the story of the villages surrounding the gulf, a certain nobleman named Tropez beheaded under Emperor Nero in a place called Genoa on the other side of the sea. His body was placed on a fishing boat with a dog and a rooster and let to drift away. The winds and currents carried the boat to the Gulf before us giving his name to the town, the rooster legend gives was found in a field of linen thus somehow giving the name of a nearby village called Cogolin. I was more interested in what happened to the dog but that part of the story was to remain a mystery.

After lunch the children were allowed to leave the table and I followed them outside where they began playing with the son of the caretaker named Bambino. Feeling I was the odd one I took off to explore the grounds working my way down to the lower area where I hoped to find water and perhaps a pond, but there was none to be found. There I did discover two wells I looked into seeking a salamander or other strange inhabitant and stone structure that looked like two basins in which water fed. My exploration was soon interrupted by calls of my name from the house at the top of the hill so I worked my way up through several steep embankments leading to the front of the house. There wasn’t much of a scolding for having disappeared from view but I learned the limits of my escapade understanding there was concern in my well exploration.

Returning to the village Catherine proposed to take me for a walk to show me the way to her store at the other end. Our communication is more a monolog as she explains the layout from the house to the main square Place des Lices, then Rue Gambetta to the rue Sibille and her interior decoration shop. My main focus is mapping my way through the maze of streets firmly decided I would venture out on my own. Within a few days of accompanying her to work I have a free rein to explore my new world of mysteries. I know no one yet in the village but already merchants and other knowingly finger me as the American boy while I venture through its tiny streets dashing from one secret passage to another.

They know of me but I roam careless and free, my secrets becoming stories instead of retreats. I now have many streams to follow in search of a pond and every day I set out to explore the tiny passages that lead from one area of the village to another. I soon discover a big pond lined with boats and people, so many I can only catch glimpses of what lies beyond. Expanding my world every day I finally explore the harbor and work my way towards the seawall.

The colorful fishing boats fascinate me and I soon learn to call them Pointu. With their faded shades of blues and whites they are a harmonious and undistracted composition. The harmony resembles the village facades that line the harbor until you look down at the street where the hustle and bustle upsets the serenity of the setting. All the objects on these boats fascinate me as I seek to understand their purpose. At heart I am an assembler, my intellect functions by association so this is a new world of discoveries, I am totally absorbed into it. I quickly imagine how the nets feed through the drum extending over the side of the boat, how the colorful poles might float and mark the net’s immerged position. If the boats are idle at these times of day the wharf is alive with activity, it is yet another world to explore.

I am allured by the musky smell of the mounds and mounds of nets that await tending, mostly by women who talk away as they toil, almost singing; I long to understand. Here a mound is being displaced by two people as if an hourglass could pass its sand horizontally, dried flakes of seaweed drop to the ground, a starfish in its path. Sometimes the passing net stops, as if eyes could snag the gaping hole. Sometimes the hole is marked with a ribbon, otherwise repaired and the hourglass continues until the mound is consumed and a new one created. I imagine the net with fish of all sizes and colors and so want to see that part of the puzzle.

Along the tall seawall that offers no clue of what lies beyond there are benches where mounds of nets are individually being checked and repaired. I like to sit between two women chatting as they mend the nets; morning sun in my eyes I feel the heat of yesterday’s sun restituted by the wall, I watch, listen, imagine they are commenting on the morning’s catch I so want to see. I am determined to see.

Always an early riser I soon begin to sneak out in the wee hours to catch a glimpse of the pointus in action. My time window is small as my stepfather, also an early riser, leaves to shop for the morning’s bread and his fougasse, a wiry looking bread that appeared to be an overgrown and never ending pretzel, so much better for its blondish color and delicious taste. He would go to the Gide bakery midway down rue Allard. It’s on my way to the wharf but I know how to circumvent the bakery where they will surely tell I passed, by meandering through the tiny cross streets.

One early morning I discover I can climb to the top of the seawall and walk all the way to the lighthouse so I post myself at the beginning of the wall. As most of the fishermen are coming from the open water I can follow them along the wall to the lighthouse, watch them push the tiller to make way around it as I too circumvent around its base, then follow the breakwater back to the fisherman’s wharf. It is nestled in a corner of the harbor where both the seawall and harbor front meet. Here the water is shallow and I can always see the bottom infested with gobie, a strange looking bottom crawler, perhaps it is akin to the catfish, must be but I wouldn’t dream of eating one. I watch them moor and tie up keeping an eye to seaside for the next arriving boat, but by the time the third boat is tied up the lure of the catch soon occupies my attention. I am not alone for the wharf suddenly comes alive as people go from boat to boat talking lively, sometimes loudly, amplified by arm and hand movements just as difficult to decipher. I have to weave my way through to catch a glimpse of what is happening, and then like the swell comes in and recedes it is all over. The baskets of fish are unloaded to the wharf and carried away. I know I am late but on my way home I follow some baskets to the fish market situated towards the middle of the harbor. It is a vaulted gallery aligned with stone slabs upon which they are displayed.

In the subdued light of the arcade I discover another contrast of colors. The fishmongers express the joy of their catch with tonalities that matched the diversity of colors and forms laid upon the stone slabs. As I looked closer I am shocked by their size, most are bigger that anything to have ever come out of my pond, but most of all I am fascinated by the diversity, there were more types of fish than I have ever imagined possible.

In this early morning it is mostly elderly women dressed in black, they have come first to choose their fish of the day. Walking between the stone stalls they blend with the granite slabs, the grace and solemnest of both movement and voice command the respect of the merchant. With a sense of reverence perhaps inspired by their attire and age I imagine their privilege of first choice

In my dread of being found out I try to sneak back to my room then emerge as if nothing had happened, but slowly I suspect my morning escapade have been uncovered or reported. The woman I cannot yet come to call mother but the only person who speaks English tells me one of the fishermen was willing to take me with him in the morning. I am surprised but mostly afraid at having been uncovered, the tone is friendly and devoid of retribution, somehow a first bridge with this family is established, my freedom confirmed.

The Sea

It’s really happening; I am shown later that day where I am supposed to be the next morning. The night is long almost sleepless in anticipation as I watch the clock set to sound at 3am. I never hear it as  well before I dress, slip out of the house and work my way to the fisherman’s wharf well before all others to stand vigil. As the fishermen arrive to man their boats in the quiet of the morning I recognized two recurrent words I often hear in the village: “Le petit Américain” or the American young one, adding the patronym of my locally well-established family of adoption. As my Captain arrives there is humor in the greetings of his colleagues; he is an elderly man with a face that looks the part. The dark tanned skin shows his lengthy stays in the sun and reflections of the sea, the deep seated rounded creases carving his face the experience and knowledge gained. I cannot understand his words but he is soft spoken, his gestures slow and precise allowing my imagination to imitate and learn.  The engine puffing in tune with the other boats the lines are cast off, the motor develops a deeper tone as the propeller strains to slice through the shallow water pushng us out of the wedge of boats on each side. As we pass the lighthouse we slip into the early morning darkness, well over an hour will pass before first light. As the two cylinder engine of the pointu plows us through the gulf towards open waters the cold of the night seems to increase with the depth of the waters. My teeth are chattering but I am determined it will not show; besides with the tuf tuf of the engine and lack of shared language I cannot betray my shame.

Finally the engine slows and somehow out of the darkness a pole emerges out of the darkness, floating in the water just as I had imagined. For years I will wonder how he finds his way in the dark of night, the mystery remains. I watch unfold the scenario I had constructed sitting on the seawall looking down at the dormant pointus. The line that was attached to the pole now on board leads to the net, now laid in the drum and slowly the net is pulled aboard. I had noted some boats have motors to turn the drum but the Sainte Anne is a small boat, as he shows me how to lay the net I worry how big the mound of netting we are pulling aboard will be. First light appears just on time to see the catch come up entangled in the net. I am quick to unweave them and warm to the expression of approval from my Captain, acknowledging my initiative he shows me how he wants the catch sorted.

When a rascasse or scorpion fish comes up he is quick to take over, showing me to be careful of its dorsal fin. I was not one to worry, bearing the scars of learning to handle the three spikes of catfish. Only once had I been afraid of my catch, I was perhaps seven during another early morning as my line goes taught as never before. I imagine I have caught the biggest catfish of the pond, at time in the struggle I fear to be pulled in but determination prevails until I finally have him by my favorite rock where I become scared out of my wits. I had pulled an eel from my pond as long as I was tall but I thought it a water-snake. Refusing to abandon my catch which meant losing my tackle I carry the heavy pole through the field and up the path crying in fear to the corner of the farmhouse, there a gutter downspout filled a wooden barrel with rainwater. Somehow I manage to lift the eel high enough to drop it into the barrel but my fishing pole remains hostage to both the eel and the barrel until my father came along and frees it. As most often I had not asked permission knowing the likely answer, for him I had played hooky by going fishing, my punishment to pick stones from the field for the rest of the day.

The catch is good and I am amazed by its diversity of colors, forms and sizes. I am a world away from my freshwater pond where inedible sunfish most often take the bait reserved for my quest of the lonely largemouth bass and occasional perch, my night crawlers are hard earned by watering the front lawn several nights in a row and getting up in the middle of the night to chase them with a flashlight. Early on I understood why the Indians would lay a sunfish under the corn seed to fertilize its growth. Here too nothing is lost, the occasional girelle royale that had not escaped through the netting joins the basket reserved for fish soup. The sun breaking over the horizon feels good as the wetness of the nets add to the cold of the night, but there is no more chatter in my teeth as my imagination stirs and hands are busy at work. Finally the second buoy pole arrives and the catch is complete, the baskets stacked against the piled net. It is time to head back and I am eager and somewhere proud at the thought of the crowd assembling upon our arrival, perhaps with my help our boat will be among the first back to harbor and to market.

With the sun coming up I discover the coastline so much closer than I imagined, its configuration becomes imprinted in my mind. Only later will I recognize the landmarks of la Moutte, la Tête de Chien, the hidden “Rocher de l’Aïl and so many others but already I know I will cherish these sights, forever seeking to return. While we make headway home burdened with the catch and mound of wet netting we have a breakfast of yesterday’s bread, alternately with canned sardines or camembert, tastes still present in my mouth. As w round the lighthouse I squint to the distant fisherman’s wharf to see which boats have made it back before us. My Captain approves with a grunt of satisfaction, we are among the first. The fish unloaded, the net “hourglassed” from ship to shore and tonight’s dried net loaded aboard my reward is his sign language expressing his expectation to see me tomorrow morning.

The mornings become routine but my discoveries never cease. My knowledge of the coast grows as the nets are placed on different grounds, the landmarks so imprinted in my memory some nights I dream of navigating from landmark to landmark. The family also has a pointu called Tante Bebelle which rarely goes out. It is named after a great aunt who had plantations in Tunisia; upon her passing the small share of inheritance divided among a tribesque Belgian family went to purchase the boat. It had a mast and a beautiful brown sail I would rarely see deployed, motoring having grace. Later and to my dismay it would soon be abandoned in favor of a the first Boston Whaler to reach the gulf.

Tante Bebelle is moored behind Saint Tropez in a bay called the Cannebiers. It is a bay with patches of wilderness; its mounds of seaweed dunes are soon to become my playground and springboard to my first seaward ventures. It is beautiful in its wild appearance sprinkled with relics of sea adventures. As I wade through the water my legs tickled by the brown strands of seaweed that seamlessly emerge from the water and connect to the cane landwall that isolates the bay, its musky sea smell I will memorize and cherish forever.

There are many old boats beached, abandoned or mostly moored in the bay. They all have their own stories and, for those too faded by the sun or mutilated by the sea I have my own tales of how they may have reached their final destination. Some lay in alcoves carved out of the forest of canes, steadied in place with makeshift struts. A few are old sailboats, their masts unstepped, their caulking bellowing between the planks; some are home to a few elder seafarers who jealously protect their anonymity and tranquility. Old men from the sea washed ashore, only too knowledgeable of their paradise found. It is a mysterious world I live insatiably; I feel part of and in a sense take ownership of “my bay”. Looking out over the coastline dominated by the Citadel there is a derelict looking iron structure emerging from the water, the elders tell me of their mystery, these are mussel farms with their long white tender moored beside. I know I am not allowed to approach but before long I snorkel out to understand how they function and discover their secrets.

My favorite snorkeling spot is on the southern side of the bay, before the house on the water where Brigitte lives, hidden between her scandal ridden walls built into the sea by my step father. Les Secs is a maze of underwater canyons and passes assembled like an outer barrier to the coastline, they resemble a natural reef almost breaking the surface. It keeps at bay those whose curiosity is discouraged by the seawalls might try to peek into the Bardot compound by way of the sea. My reef stretches along the east side all the way to the mouth of the bay where the Von Opel tower emerges. To me it is a sore within the landscape were it not for the personal harbor and boathouse designed into the structure.

Still unable to communicate in French some recognize and tolerate my mischievous presence for I am always ready to prove my worthiness with a helping hand. On morning I encounter an English sailor who built his catamaran somewhere in the southern seas and beached it for repairs in my bay. This is an extraordinary mystery that slowly unravels as he parsimoniously shares some of his story. It’s my initiation to boat work, sea tales and classical music. Every morning I rush out in the wee hours to lend an uncertain hand until one morning he is gone. I feel abandoned in not being able to share his adventure, but my world had not expanded that far, my horizon of discoveries is still before my eyes. My adventures continue as my expectations grow, progressively a few words of French have work their way into my brain by the necessity to enable rudimentary communication with a few tolerant French friends. I begin to crew on centerboards until I am given the boat nobody wanted.

My First Boat

It is my first boat, a fast 4.9 meter centerboard called the Caneton Strale. It had been designed and introduced by Ettore Santarelli in the early1960’s and somehow an early pre-production model had been abandoned in Saint Tropez. It is my companion, my fireboat of early years with whom I engage in my first sea adventures, my first real stories. It has no name as we were one to learn the elements of wind and sea and we challenge these elements well beyond our abilities and designed purpose.

It is a revolutionary boat for its time, the first double hulled with a self bailing transom, but if it is complicated to rig and set and obsolete for these reasons it was my challenge to understand the why of each of it parts and tune each for our common purpose. It lost the edge to a broader range of simpler competition class boats such as the early 420, 470 and 505s. They are nice boats but I love the Canton’ complexity and the constant challenge it offered. I put it and myself through enormous tests under the Mistral northerly, a cold low pressure that drops off the Alps and rushes down the Rhone valley. It is well known in Provence as it flushes the cloud laden easterlies and westerly’s back out to sea, often brutally emerging within minutes out of the NNW, at times up to force nine.

There are several Mistrals in the Mediterranean, but this is the one all sailors learn to respect and fear. For the young pup I am, neither wizened nor respectful of the powers of sea and wind, it’s the moment of excitement. Before climate change seemed to distort accepted tradition the Mistral is known to blow three, six or nine days, and like its railroad namesake ferrying the Parisians to the south it is usually punctual, or should I say predictable. If the Mistral held through dusk it would be there in the morning.

The family tired of ferrying me to the bay, they found a bicycle which only enhanced my freedom. I have advanced warning of the arrival of the Mistral for a painting in the hallway changes as fast as the barometer on the opposite wall indicates a drop in air pressure, as the needle drops the bottom right of its stretcher distorts and separates from the wall as if to point to the nearby staircase leading down and out of the house. I never bother looking twice least all the barometer, I respond to the stretcher.

These days see me on the water early and alone to challenge the wind. Once rigged and ready dry seaweed blowing in my face I drag her to water deep enough to begin lowering the centerboard and climb aboard ready for a close haul in the cold chop lifted by the Mistral. It is a tricky departure as Brigitte’ protective barrier reef constrains me to have immediate steerage for the Mistral is on my nose and the reef close by. Off to a close haul to the center of the bay before we set sail across the Gulf of Saint Tropez to Sainte Maxime. From there it is an exhilarating beam reach over and a broad reach back. With four miles to the windward shore of the bottom of the gulf, where Port Grimaud would be created, the Mistral whips up a strong chop to fight on the way over then smoothing the way home. I learn to master it and the boat single handed, rappelled out in forty knot winds, often with my hands almost frozen to the tiller extension. Many a time a forced ditch hardens my resolve and abilities; at times a motorboat approaches to propose help I decline as I bring her back and board for the next leg. Soon I venture further, first beyond the gulf, then to Le Pinet on the other side of the peninsula of Saint Tropez, after that streaking across the four mile beach of Pampelonne  to Cap Camarat. As my resolve hardens I venture to the isles of Levant through broad expanses of open water. These crossings with distant land perspectives summon the lure of blue water where I irresponsibly dare to venture, secretly wanting to reach Corsica well over a hundred and fifty miles away. Decades later and wiser I would finally go there.

Back to School, “Le Couvent” or The Convent

Summer has come to an end, and with it my new found freedom, it is time to go to school. Nobody knows that learning does not come naturally to me for I am an undiagnosed hyperactive. The results of my mental and intellectual evaluation had been comforting for Mother and a disaster for me as expectations were equally elevated with no understanding of my problem. Catherine isn’t interested in my past, it is just assumed that I am at my grade age level and will adapt. My half brother and sister are in a primary school run by the nuns and there seems to be no better alternative for me. Mademoiselle Automan, the headmistress of Le Couvent, considers the best solution is to immerse me in the regular curriculum, little does she know all hell is to break loose, for me and all those involved.

I am a fish out of water sitting in this classroom; listening to this foreign language with an acute attention disorder deficit is excruciating for I have nothing to focus on. I am restless and mad confronting my own incomprehensible, probably making everyone else’s life just as miserable. I don’t care; I have escaped from my past and am riding on a wild high that feeds on my newfound freedom. I have become rambunctious; somewhere avenging my past, unaccepting of anything or anyone in my way. They quickly decide there was no value in trying to teach me Latin, I am pulled out of that class and absolved of any wrongdoing, a first battle won, on to the next! My only wish is to have the other subjects extracted from my curriculum.

I find and upside to school, an English speaking friend who is wilder than me. We get in early to plan our capers, starting with firecrackers and then see big. The recreation courtyard is enclosed with high walls that make captivity seem worse. The only way in or out is through the main gate, impossible to exit without passing in front of the Mother Superior’ window, besides, the priest is all too often standing vigil over his flock from the portal of his adjacent church. We conclude the only way out is making a hole in the wall and discover the best spot behind the stele of the Virgin Mary. It is built out from the wall to look like an elevated cavern; we both consider its position in the far corner of the courtyard best for we can operate away from view of the supervising nuns, never thinking two troublemakers are certain to be missed well before roll call. The next question is how to, it is a thick old wall of jointed fieldstones. Our mischievous conclusion is to blow a hole through it. We pool our pocket money to buy evermore firecrackers, extracting the gunpowder, making what we wanted to be a stick of dynamite. I don’t know if we could have succeeded for before we were ready, our caper uncovered it was decided we were to be separated – I never saw him again.

They know there would be no peace until the rudiments of language are drummed into me, their first efforts blunted they begin to realize this will not be an easy task. A tutor is found in the center of the village for the morning hours, far enough from school to alleviate the poor teacher’s day. She is ferocious and doesn’t speak a word of English, or at least like many French will never admit to. With a history of mental depressions and attempted suicides she is a protégé of my Headmistress Mademoiselle Authoman. Does she see her calling in me or is it her devotion to the Mademoiselle, regardless she relentlessly drums the grammar and vocabulary into my head until tears emerge: perhaps she sees these as a breach in the wall for its effect devastates by doubling her resolve. Perhaps my afternoons at school are bearable out of the pure exhaustion from my morning séances but by the end of the year the blue BLED of French grammar held no secrets, and I daresay I could conjugate any verb, regular or not beyond the best of my classmates. I hold no pride in this and lay low as I am quick to realize from experience that the ability to understand bears responsibility.

My morning tutoring is followed by the strict and silent lunch with the nuns. All the tables are set side by side into a large rectangle, to one side the row of black veils supervising and watching the hands of their flock seated on the three other sides, girls to the right boys to the left with a final black veil to mark the dividing line. By that time I was hungry and mostly quiet four days a week, the fifth, season accepting, was “soupe de feve” or broad bean soup day. For me it was the French equivalent to cauliflower I would obstinately refuse to eat. The battle of wills would reignite, never to be won excepting my recreation time spent sitting before my bowl.

Beyond teaching me French this first year is considered a write off for the rest of the curriculum but my presence in school cannot be circumvented. To neutralize my disruptive behavior other panaceas are found to offset their pain, afternoons I was given “travaux pratiques” or applied work session. I am allowed to do model construction way in the back of the class. My choice is quick; at the toy shop on Rue Allard I asked for a model of Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria. I have never made a plastic model but I am already street smart, I name it after the teacher believing that once finished I can ask for the Niña and the Pinta. Strangely when the time comes both are be unavailable, perhaps a last ditch effort to bring me into the mainstream. I am beginning to voice my frustrations in French while dueling with marbles in the recreation yard, a source vocabulary regularly repeated except in the classroom, exceptions taken.

By the end of this first year I have reached a level of proficiency allowing me to join the mainstream curriculum with satisfactory results. Rather than allow me to pursue schooling in Saint Tropez these parents decide to send me to weekly boarding school first in Saint Paul de Vence a few hours away then to another closer by allowing me to remain closer to my newfound passion and remain closer to the village and shores I had come to love

The sea is never far from my consciousness; its fluidity has become a part of my being. If during the long winter sailing is sparse my spare time is at the water’s edge exploring wedges in the stone formations or beachcombing for collectables after the winter easterlies that pound the beach. My stepfather, a forever subscriber to National Geographic, had walls of past editions kept in a certain “petit coin”; there sitting on the throne I can admire the twenty or more year repository of his only indulgence with the English language. When the Brother’s Four series is exhausted from the bookshop near the wharf, I begin to peruse through the years of editions in quest of sea related stories, the maps included in most editions I squirrel away to his exasperation. Sometime around 1965 National Geographic begins to publish their three part coverage of what will become my lifelong dream. I became Robin Lee Graham on his twenty four foot Dove as he sails around the world, I was wearing the pages thin in anticipation of the sequel, if I could not be near the water I would read again and dream of being there.

My adolescence and initiation to the sea is also filled with the presence and evening stories of accomplished sailors and adventurers. My new home is a crossroad where fascinating people from all walks of life are brought together by affinity, sole of these evenings I never miss. As the eldest child and known to be sleepless my presence is tolerated, I would sit in a corner of the living room or the floor of the kitchen closest to the dining room table and take in the stories of here and afar, colors and experiences from Marcel Pagnol to Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre would appear in a different crowd, iconic directors such as René Clair and politicians such as Alexandre Sanguinetti whose character, dedication to public office and rectitude would be a role model and lighthouse throughout my life.

The seafarers capture my imagination the most. Adventuring navigators such as such as Pierre Sterks and the story of his shipwreck and life with indigenous south Pacific island tribes; naval architect Claude Graf and the Taos Brett 5 he designed and built in Ceylan before sailing home to the Gulf of Saint Tropez and ultimately Port Grimaud. Claude has this extraordinary ability to sit for hours on his heels with feet flat on the floor, a captivating posture enhanced by his words and stories; I imagine him on deck in similar posture braving the elements he the same poised calm. Then there is the charismatic Francois Spoerry, architect extraordinaire and creator of Port Grimaud and later Port Liberty in New Jersey as well as sailor; after La Desirade he purchased the Amphitrite, the last three squared mast in the Mediterranean. Eery time it is in harbor I sit on the wharf exploring her rig for hours as I dream of crewing on it. If the ship’s cook Driss sees me I can sneak aboard for hours of wonderment; he later went on to create his Port Saïd Moroccan restaurant beside the Giscle River.

The continuum of life bears many surprises as years later I visit Claude Graf while he is living in Annapolis. He is exploring the opportunity to create a Port Grimaud type seafaring community on the Eastern Shore. Again years later while I am making my first Atlantic passage on Lou Pantaï (The Dream in the old language of Provence), laying up in Horta after the first leg I find myself tied up next to the Taos Brett III and its new Swiss owner while Claude would soon be involved with Taos Bret IV in a fatal regatta collision with the schooner Mariette. The legal imbroglio generated by the accident will seal the fate of the annual Nioulargue meet. It is host of all the tall old ones that converge for the last event of the season as well as an extraordinary window of time with the aggressive new designs competing for the Rolex Cup. Such an event could not simply disappear; it would become “Les Voiles de Saint Tropez” and remains the most envied meet late September as it closes the Mediterranean regatta season.

Catherine becomes Maman

My inclusion happened one morning when my French mother, lass and perhaps at times embarrassed to being called Catherine by this American son she could hardly refute, browbeat me to calling her maman or mother in French. Perhaps it generated a sense of intimacy for suddenly she begins to confide her problems with me. The innocence of my late found childhood begins to wear thin as I am quite unprepared to assume such a load, from the intimacy of her marital frustrations to an affair with a named industrialist, and the frivolous reason why she turned back. It is also a turning point for me for I have been singled out as the child who knows, confiding such knowledge instilled a notion of responsibility I will bear and often assume for years to come.

As the years go by the frightening periods of my childhood fade in favor of certain nostalgia. I am comfortable in France but not French; the love-hate relationship between the French and Anglo-Saxon worlds is brewing to a high point that will culminate with the expulsion of our bases in just a few years. There is discomfort within the family that appears to have adopted me as they experience difficult times, their magnificent lifestyle threatened by financial woes. As the family problems grow the two younger children are insulated with purpose while I witness the brunt and impact of the storms brewing, threats of foreclosure, sale of heirlooms carried away by strangers and properties that are no more. I am so close to the unfolding events to become an actor involved in seeking solutions. Catherine’ decoration business is been sacrificed; the facilities sold to Fred, the owner a boutique selling casual clothing range under the brand Vilbrequin.

If Fred is not a sailor he is an adventurer with a passion for automobiles and a wide repertoire of stories of automotive treks afar. I love his stories and at the end of one such tale suggest he expand his business to the other side of Saint Tropez where the family needed to sell another failing business and their home. It saved the day and provided a short lived remission to their problems. I am saddened by the loss of this safe harbor I feel so much a part of yet good for having contributed in my small way to helping this family I was increasingly feeling a part of.

For the moment I feel odd being the recipient of her preoccupations and innermost frustrations, all the more considering it is largely a one way street, never expressing an interest in my past, neither the mental nor the so visible physical scars and deformities of my body, themselves a mental scar I attempt to hide for so long. Neither was she interested in Mother who she never met nor communicated with, but whose regular letters to me bear some uncomfortable meaning she alone is privy to. Only once does she did ask me why I fold all my bedcovers down and sleep at the bottom of the bed,  I cannot tell her the truth, it is still a deeply hidden secret, so I tell her I need to smother myself to sleep. End of story.

I had arrived in her life as if a boarder, others would say the stray dog, then to assume the role of confidant. Years later in a letter of recriminations she would say I was heartless while the siblings chant to who will listen “after all they had done for me”. Why and how I feel the need to help them in their distress I will partially understand much later, but to assume some responsibility for this family over the next thirty years will burden the course of my life.

As their difficulties grew I have been pushed aside, then away to boarding schools. If France and the French language have become less foreign to me the family ties I have learned to relish slowly loose substance. While I am emboldened by the exhilarating emancipation of my first years, increasingly I feel my culture and identity lie to the other side of the pond. The attenuation of the frightening childhood is supplanted by a sense of belonging elsewhere. I miss the experience of growing up with my generation, of recognizing visual icons of my early years. I miss the farm and the better memories of that childhood. Strengthening my notion of a change on the home front, during my absence a brother was born. The birth of Christian in 1965 is a double paradigm shift in that it fudges the memories of my father and provides the illusion of a family I am losing in France. I set my mind and tell Mother I want to come home.

I am so excited at the throught of going home, of living in small town Washingtonville, going to high school with my generation and in my own language.

The Rock Creek Farm of my childhood has been sold in favor of Stonehedge Farm, a real working farm much larger and closer to New York enabling us to live there while father commutes instead of weekends and holidays. It is a beautiful working farm with rolling hills and forest, good tillable acreage from which we harvest silage, grain and hay for a herd of eighty Charolais and a dozen Holstein and Guernsey cows kept to nurture calves. Its history is far different; it is nestled in the Hudson Valley and in the middle of horse country with Monticello to the south and Goshen’s Hall of Fame for the trotter seventeen miles north. It had housed Theodore Roosevelt in the late twenties, likely there to admire the great Hambletonian trotter, buried with an engraved stone marker in the walnut grove on the north side of the house.

Beside the main house {The  there was an equally imposing carriage house, its interior built of cherry wood darkened to a deep red hue with the passage of time. It must have enough room for buggies and other vehicles needed for the ten guestrooms of the main house notwithstanding the three dependence houses of which two are attached to either side. I loved to work saddle soap into the leather of my saddle in the tack room that still carried the scent of oils, wax, leather and horse sweat. All that is still far away in another world, first I have to get there.

My First Atlantic Crossing

Father does not seem to be in rush to get me home. For my repatriation he has organized travel on one of his chartered freighters, now readying its voyage to Philadelphia from Dunkirk where it is being loaded with cold rolled steel destined for one of his customers.

Little does he know how this adventure dovetails with my passion, an Atlantic crossing! In anticipation my imagination is running wild while the first challenge is to find this ship on the opposite side of France.

It never dawns upon me that France is quite this big as I trudge north train after train; then again here I am going from one extremity to the other, on an imaginary scale akin to going from Miami to Boston. My journey begins with the Blue Train in nearby Saint Raphael, destination Paris. From there I will need to catch a taxi between two train stations or from Gare Saint Lazare to Gare du Nord on the opposite side of Paris, there I will board another train north into unchartered territory. The Blue Train or “Train Bleue” is a sleeper train with linen bedclothes and a washbasin but it is a sleepless night as I am hopping with excitement before arriving in the early hours in Paris. The excitement becomes frantic as I worry of missing the connection on the other side of the city or losing one of my precious pieces of luggage in which I have bundled my years of treasures. Finally settled for the long trek north my frustration grows as this train seems to stop everywhere in what appears to be a flat dreary landscape. With each new arrival among the changing passengers in my compartment I query the time to our destination until I finally we pull into the station in Dunkirk. From the train station it neither looked nor felt like a harbor until, in my second taxi of the day we break through the city walls to the harbor. Anticipation is at a climax as I arrive alongside the MV Falster.

It is awesome to be standing on this pier with huge cranes towering over me. They are all in a concert of actions swinging back and forth between railcars aligned along the pier and this huge ship I am about to board. She is a recent merchant vessel under Swedish pavilion and I am quickly whisked to my cabin with instructions to remain there until the Captain calls for me. That is not to be for once I am certain there is nobody standing faction to watch my door I venture on deck. I marvel at the huge cranes lifting an equally huge steel coil, swinging it through the air before slowly lowering it into a hold where a regiment of carpenters and mechanics are building a matrix of wood and cables to secure the load. As the day fades I worry of being found out and wonder if the Captain has summoned me. As I approach my cabin I am confident my caper has gone unnoticed and before long the First Mate knocks on my door to announce dinner. He leads me to a large dining room that looks out upon the foredeck, in its center the Captain’s table. It is obvious the officers are conversing in English out of courtesy for me, but it soon livens and switches to Swedish. The gist of the English part of their discussion is immediate and the mood grumpy as the Swedish Captain is concerned with both the content and arrest of his lading. His vessel is late and securing the twenty ton steel coils in the holds is becoming his nightmare for there is heavy weather announced for the mid-Atlantic area, it is already June and tropical depressions are beginning to migrate north.

It is a night departure from our berth to the high seas and I have no intention to stay out of harm’s way. Smart enough to know a request will be denied I have found a tight recess on the bridge where my presence is sufficiently inconspicuous to be tolerated, it will by my post for the next ten days whenever the Captain is on the bridge. By night I alternate between the helm, radar and chart table where our progression is regularly plotted and within a few days I am known to the First and Second mates and helmsmen who alternate. By day I explore every nook and cranny of the ship and before long I am wizened to the secret passageways built into the hull enabling me to travel from one extremity to the other below decks.

Some five days out the weather has deteriorated, the Falster is heaving in the long deep waves coming out of the southwest and our Captain is so concerned with the stability of our consignment the mood in the dining room is thick enough to cut through. For the next two days I decide to eat in the pantry.

My nights are fascinating as the First Mate Jon is teaches me to plot our position, shows me how our course has been modified to better cope with the storm system, finally he explains the Captain’s worry for if one of the coils breaks loose it can go right through the Falster’ double hull crippling and sinking the vessel. Although somewhat alarmed by this prospect my mind is clouded by growing nausea and I begin to fall into sync with the ship’s heaving. I am determined that sea sickness will not steal me away from the bridge and ask the First Mate if he is ever seasick. His answer is a story that hits me like a cold shower, immediately hardening my resolve. It was his first posting as they fought their way through an Atlantic storm, the young officer Jon a was as sick as can be but his First Mate had him tied to the mast above the bridge to bear the full brunt of the storm for two days of wind rain and sea spray. After he assures me it is a question of mind over matter. I swallow that with a large grain of salt, imagine it is a wave of salt water and immediately feel better, but that evening at dinner when the Chief Engineer suggests I spend tomorrow in the engine room I take a case for the worse and run to my cabin in quest of relief. Earlier that day I had walked before the engine room access, the combination of sounds and diesel smells had me running to the deck in quest of fresh air.

By the time the continental shelf begins to rise under the Falster’s hull I have learned to plot our approach to Wilmington Delaware, to tell the difference between gleaming satellites and stars in the crisp night sky, finally, the mysteries of the sextant and two gimbaled clocks validating the time of observation of the sun over the horizon.

As the ten day journey across the Atlantic comes to an end the reality beyond my endeavor emerges, Father is there with our farm manager Charlie Manning who will drive me to the farm while Father attends to his business and returns to New York City. I look forward to the drive north with Charlie who will bring me up to date with the farm-work I am so looking forward to.

The Battered Child Returns for More, for the Farm

I delve back into life on the farm and the heavy work with great enjoyment, proud to help bring in eight thousand bales of hay that first summer, filling the silo with corn silage and simply working for Charlie. Charlie and his wife Marion are from the America I love, hardened Vermonters stout and direct, they could have easily posed for Grant Wood’ new American Gothic. Hard working honest people never wasting a word, I always know what they think as it is all said in their expression.

After a hard day of work Marion invites me in for a piece of freshly baked carrot cake and milk, Sundays Charlie quietly sits back, his white socked feet on the couch to watch the ball game in the hope nobody will report a rambunctious steer who will have decided the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. It is a syndrome I will soon understand for if I love this world but my childhood woes soon return, my self-assurance beaten back.

Father is less present than during my childhood for he commutes to his office in New York daily and travels often to Europe or South America. The physical abuse had ceased the day I broke three of his ribs by ramming my head into his chest in self-defense; I was learning to fight back shortly before I had been shipped to France five years back but I am still afraid of him, weary of his dark penetrating eyes settling on me like the ton of rocks he had me pick years prior. Now I am learning his true talents of mental torture and manipulation. I am losing the fragile balance I acquired in his absence, the need for another pond much like the one in Earlton emerges. I find it and take flight, soon to discover it is not a solution, I need to escape for good. I decide to run away, to hide for a new life in Burlington Vermont where a friend from high school has beckoned me to find refuge.

Father and Mother are abroad for ten days and I see this window of opportunity to make good on my escape. I feel I am betraying the trust of Charlie and Marion but know I cannot share my plan. My departure for school that morning is a subterfuge with my backpack hidden next to the bus stop, as it enters the school perimeter I walk off to the parking lot where my friend awaits to drive me north of Newburg where my raised thumb and my back to northbound traffic hopes for a ride. Days go by with spurts of progress as one vehicle after another advance my journey with a load of questions I have learned to deflect or answer innocuously: where am I going, are you not too young to be traveling alone, where are you staying tonight, have you eaten. I am overwhelmed by the concern and generosity of total strangers but my story of going to visit Uncle Charlie in Vermont holds water and their outpouring a contribution. Some will offer me a bed for the night, some snow shoveling chores to earn pocket money and a night’s board. I am well under way with New York then Connecticut behind me when, between two rides a patrol car way up north finds it strange for such a young boy to backpack alone. It is winter and I am six days away trudging through snow and ice, I have worked for food and pitched tent in the cold, I was winning until now. I refuse to tell the Smoky where I am from and he is not taking my recalcitrance kindly, betrayal is buried in my backpack where they find trace and I am sold back to the devil.

The return to father’s grip is a disaster in more ways than one. Mother is in a heightened emotional state, barely recuperated from Christian’ birth a few months earlier, she is now redecorating one of the houses for the arrival of ailing grandparents Momsy and Popsy. They are moving down from Coxsackie to be closer to the family but their health is slipping away; within a few months I witness the passing of the only grandparents I would ever know, silent supporters of my being. Father is totally insensitive to these terrible events, besides at first adamantly refusing Popsy’ transfer to the main house where Mother could more easily ensure his comfort, he will refuse to even acknowledge his presence until that fatal morning when he was no longer with us. As weeks and months go by I come to understand how Europe shielded me from his mental aggressions and manipulations. It was to be the “next to last time” I would allow myself to come within his reach. Bruises heal with time and the battered child will drop his shield once again to come back as an adult for one last hard lesson learned.

As much as I love farm life I soon want to return to that special place in my heart, to Europe where I am insulated from him. Little has changed in my bay but the yard that kept my Caneton has disappeared, with it my boat. The seas are soothing after a year back home but short lived as conditional to my return is my father’s decision that I be enrolled in a boarding school, far from the coast, far from my French mother, catalyst of his aggressions towards me.

Far from everything it is. The College de Normandie in northwestern France is on top of a plateau where Clères four miles away is the closet village. It is a region nicknamed France’ toilet bowl for the incessant rain and grey skies, throughout the campus cows from the adjacent farm are tied to the stake in concentric circles to keep the grass at bay. Four years landlocked in boarding school in Normandy leaves me with ever shorter vacations to revert to my interrupted passion except for one annual passage of the pond. The mandatory return from Europe each year is on another of my father’s chartered freighters. He has no notion of my passion; I had never mentioned sailing and the sea for no dialog exists between us. Little does he know I am not just a passenger on a merchant vessel as for ten to twelve days I can explore and learn. As on the converted mineral carrier Jean Sebastien my nights are spent on the bridge plotting course, calculating distance, learning the magic of radar and of stories of the sea that convey respect for its power before arriving in either Wilmington or the Great Lakes.

My summers are mandatory work on the farm as contribution to the cost of my education but the two months of work I enjoy are a feeble price to pay for the ten months away from my father. The Collège de Normandie is in more than one way the most formative period in my life. The first year is extraordinarily difficult; besides my attention deficit disorder I still lack the people skills needed to survive in such a closed and tight knit environment. I remain insecure and in need of both acceptance and recognition, all the more difficult in this mainly upper crust issued societal environment that easily competes over the frivolous, over benchmarks derived from a shared culture that is foreign to me. With few options I learn to adapt quickly and by the end of the second year the Headmaster singles me out to assume responsibilities as prefect or “Captain”.

At first I am responsible for a dormitory of six, then a floor of twenty five younger boys. This peer system is extraordinarily challenging, it enables me to nurture my intellect, learn self-discipline and through the exercise of concern for others leadership and character. I advance rapidly from floor to house prefect and finally in my last year head prefect of the school while obtaining my baccalaureate with honors. I am almost in disbelief and remember a few weeks back stargazing on my way back from study hall, as a fleeting star passes above me, only one word emerges, succeed.

We are but a handful of lucky ones to be accepted in the first examination session, among them Jean Luc my co-Head Prefect and Thierry who replaced me as the ”Tilleuls” House Prefect; we are in a festive mood of achievement in quandary of what to do with the ten days gained over our fellow classmates. The answer arrived the next morning after assembly hall, once everyone dispersed after roll call for their classes and exams. Wondering where to go Thierry suggests we go to his family’s retreat on the coast and then to their farm near Paris to happily bury our adolescence partying away. We all know that tomorrow will be more challenging than the coveted few years here in Normandy where our only true gripe was the finishing school’ seclusion, so instrumental to our success. That is a notion likely to take time to bubble up to our consciousness, perhaps only once confronted to a larger challenge somewhere around the next bend, for now with our turbocharged egos none of that mattered. Days pass as we adorn the same smiles of contentment; we know this free ride is coming to an end, not quite ready to accept what lies ahead. The clock strikes midnight when out of the blue my father calls to announce he is coming to pick me up.

I have not seen or heard from him since the previous summer and the mere notion of his existence is a cold shower, a douse to the joy of having successfully passed the milestone of adolescence. He arrives early that afternoon showing off with a borrowed Bentley; flaunting his professional and social life before this family of gentlemen farmers more interested in growing wheat and sugar beets in this region to the north of the Paris. It is so preposterous, I feel so mortified. Worse to come, for once he has run his thread he turns to me and starts inventing a construct of my accomplishments. There is no more denigrating me at that time for I am the tool of his self-aggrandizement. Thierry’ family who has so gracefully invited me is equally pleased to see us leave, I will never hear from either Thierry or Jean Luc again.

With my luggage shipped by the school to Saint Tropez I oblige Father to drop me at the neatest Metro or subway station, my future is plotted and he is not on the horizon. I want to become a country veterinarian and my enrollment is accepted at Texas A&M. It is considered with the “too close to home” Cornell among the best for my chosen field. With no intention to return to the farm this year I catch the Mistral train in Paris and roll south – to the sea.

It is a short summer as I will need to prepare and arrive at Texas A&M earlier than previous years, in my high-spirited carelessness little do I know my stay is to be extended.  I am packed and about to fly home when a telegram stops me in my tracks. The Selective Service for Viet Nam is scouring the countryside to draft every able body; it should not be a problem with the student deferment I merited but little do I know Father has been vertically filing into the waste bin all the student deferment forms. I am now a certified draft dodger to be apprehended at the border!  Too busy he is unwilling to address the issue at this time and I wonder what I am going to do stranded in Europe. With my plans for the future sidetracked I follow some courses in Neuchatel Switzerland while working odd jobs to earn living money. As the odd jobs take precedence over my studies a year and a course of my life are lost. By the following summer I can enter the country without passing through a jail cell and enroll at Syracuse University where I am accepted building on Mother’s alumni status. A few years later and with both Father and School behind me I jump the pond and accept a first job in Germany, then in 1973 on to France into advertising before I start my own business in 1977.

Living in France does not bring me any closer to the Mediterranean I love, besides my French family has lost everything in Saint Tropez and become my dependents of sort. Before the family sought refuge and some anonymity in Paris the young sister is sent to live with me to escape the foreclosures on the properties and home as well as separate her from a deemed bad crowd. From afar I know how destabilizing the events are and the impact on these two children who have been harbored from the storms, but I am ill prepared to manage a revolted child while seeking my own bearings in life. Working long days and having to respond to Principals and authorities on the whereabouts of a minor looking for trouble is not idyllic. The experience is short lived as she is ejected from the Lycée Saint James, winning her return to Saint Tropez for the short time left of the family’s tenure there. A few years later after starting my own company I am encouraged to provide employment for my half-brother failing in his studies and then for his destitute father.

With my two eldest children are born during this period  my life is too monopolized by work and family to even consider the sea. I had only shared my passion for the farm with their mother; the sea was anathema for her.

In dire need of the freedom to roam I find a compromise, sailing on land with a motor-home. The idea is tempting were the choice of vehicle and challenge not transposed from my living image of the wild open space of my youth. Although France is one of the least densely populated countries in this part of Europe it does not offer the open spaces of my youth, charting courses on land was too constraining and the theft of our white elephant motor home puts an end to the adventure.

Somewhat obsessive by nature I soon become a workaholic digging a rut from which I could find no escape with the exception of summer months on the farm in Virginia. There I engage short lived affairs with my other loves, for its land to be tilled and managed, for the contemplative distractions of its streams and ponds, for the beauty of changing seasons and the natural role of tending the transitions. Whenever possible during business trips to the US I would lay aside days to return to seasonally tend herd and address farm management issues, hire and fire managers soured or vengeful from my father’s treatment. His proximity was at arm’s length and on my terms, age and a third wife he could neither control nor manipulate had weakened him

The French elections in May of 1981 mark a new turning point in my life, the knee-jerk reactive decision to return home. Selling all and returning is not an easy process in this France in turmoil; the socialists are bent on leaving an indelible mark on the conservative fabric of the societal model, somehow forgetting conservatism is a cultural trait in the French psyche while its societal model is one of the most advanced among developed countries. For the sake of ideology a brash process of nationalizations is initiated, starting with the ever evil financial sectors to reaffirm the authority of their power. The Finnish manufacturer of most of my products agreed to buy me out a year later conditional upon staying for two years to restructure their other European consumer product activities, then move to their US operations in a senior management position based in Chicago. My love of the sea was dormant temporarily substituted by my love of the land. Lake Michigan and fate would tempt me as I am about to miss two unique opportunities.

From the executive management board I serve on after the acquisition of my company I watch and participate in the restructuring of the group, to include divestment of the Fiskars shipyard, builder of the Finnsailer and Finnfire sailboats. They are a sturdy boat built to withstand the North Sea brutality in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Finland. I had spent a few weekends in Finland sailing them with pleasure. While preparing my departure I was offered to purchase the remaining Finnsailer 34 demonstration model left in Cannes on the Mediterranean. It was a great opportunity that did not mesh with everyone’s priorities of the time to my later chagrin.

 

The path of life is similar to sailing as regardless of one’s goal prevailing winds affect its course. Since 1978 a relative entente is established with my father. It starts with the preparation of our wedding as my wife to be having lost her father years before, cannot imagine going to the altar without the presence of my father. He is there showing off his latest wife, parading his persona, but most could see through the thin veneer as well as the plastic surgery provided the new wife, ex airline hostess in her Channel taffetas dress. It was a fleeting show-off passage in which he was generous enough to pay for the Champagne before disappearing to my relief; my only regret is his disallowing Mother’s presence in favor of the new bride.

I will not hear of him for about a year when out of the blue his assistant and longtime friend Francis calls to pay a visit in Paris. I have pleasure is seeing Francis, in hearing the intonations of his Marseille accent that he poises to intermingle so purposefully with his adopted English. He too loves the veneer and his bachelorhood rambling away and mentioning in passing father’ bout with cancer, we are invited to visit him. It is set for the next Christmas holidays, the children love the farm and I love sharing its secrets with them, but for the last time his proximity will sidetrack the course of my life as his final manipulation is yet to unfold.

Selling my company in the end is relinquishing my independence, the foundation upon which my entrepreneurial drive builds. If restructuring European operations on the model of the French division is an extension of my prior construct, my commitment to join the executive board to design and report on such activities required I enter the fray of corporate politics. I discover that upper management leadership is too often self-serving, both process and experience shaking the core my entrepreneurial foundations. The loner in me is growing terribly apprehensive of the political side of the large corporation, bringing me to question my initial plan to transfer to the US operations, regardless of my very senior management role and authority.

The Young Adult Returns One Last Time

I am easily lured by my father’s words of future retirement and request I join to take over the business in New York. I dislike the New York of my childhood and cannot fathom living there; besides it is not a place to raise children. He commits to move the business to Washington DC, deal-maker when considering our attachment to the farm in Virginia. Building on that promise we settle the family in the Washington suburb. McLean versus Annapolis is a difficult choice but the proximity and access to the farm in Charlottesville prevails. While the water is no longer a construct of my life the farm passion is still alive and I had no boat. McLean it is and I begin to commute for two years in the wait, hostage to the mistake of having advanced much of my capital to the company, the final manipulation behind his proposal I join. The futile wait ends with none of his commitments honored, outstanding funds from capital to salary unrecoverable, any remaining relationship with my father forever severed.

The failure of these two years has taken a toll on the family and my morale. At one point I consider going back to school to continue my veterinarian studies but the enormity of the task coupled with the need to sustain a family is an impossible wall to consider climbing, once again my entrepreneurial drive has to find a new course to build upon.

With my knowledge and experience of Europe I begin consulting, at first for US companies seeking opportunities in Western Europe, then history repeats itself, the trade winds blow in the other direction and I begin assisting European companies into North America. The Atlantic passage becomes an ethereal way of life but over versus on the water. During short summer getaways we escape to visit Mother on Cape Cod where some day sailing helps me initiate the children with little success. Perhaps it is to be expected, I share little with them other than the limited time spent home. Fathering is foreign to me without a role model, or rather in abnegation of my own experience and the fear of repeating the past endured. Then the cost of entrepreneurship is the work load and the absences. It will take its toll as my marriage falls apart.

Major life upsets often prompt important course changes. When my friend José commissions his Bristol Channel Cutter I begin sailing the Chesapeake, my adolescent years in Saint Tropez came back with a vengeance. As the sea sooths turbulent times the urge to return to the water with my own boat becomes a priority. At every opportunity I am on or by the bay seeking a path back to my dream.