2:05 p.m.
Kinsey, my freshly
graduated daughter is peevishly standing half on and half off my living room
carpet. All I see are her lower calves and feet because they were first to
draw my attention after she dressed for a trip to my summer office. My old
dirty white sneakers are on each foot, showing degraded cracked noses and
cheeks like old men caricatured out of old nylon stockings. (Too many soakings
during earlier river trips.) The laces limp down to the floor and go off where
they want because they're not tied. An insult to stylish dress but she is
willing to go, because her father, who is not stylish, will be the only one
looking.
The day is cool
in the sixties and the sun is not shining.
At the boat landing
she puts on the old hooded sweatshirt I warned her she'd need, but high-water
jeans stop mid-calf and I worry about mosquitoes biting. She is unaccustomed
to life out-of-doors, out of her car, out of Wal-Mart excursions with non-outdoorsy
girl friends.
I lay down the law
about cell phones and request that she leave it back in the car.
She steps off the
dock into the boat, legs scissoring far as the gap widens fast, then stands
on the floor and changes the subject and warns me that the top of the tote's
rainwater is "going to go everywhere, you know. You realize that don't
you?"
We are off to plant
sunflower seeds along prominent places of the river. And Kinsey's working
brave cheer against imperfect climate conditions. Her weight rocks the boat
and rotates the seat when she's not looking. It twirls away and her butt lands
hard on the deck.
2:50-
Hands pulled inside
sweatshirt sleeves against the cold, coppery long hair whipping in the wind
as we advance upriver, she is grinning!
3:15-
We stop in the office
and fight tall thick grass to plant a few seeds, but the mosquitoes torment
us in stereo and raise red welty itches. Back into the main river and up,
searching for a suitable spot to get rid of more seeds. Kinsey is facing forward,
hood up, sack of seeds held between her feet, shoulders hunched high as the
cool air dissipates the fun. From behind she appears a cadaver in clothes,
propped up on the seat.
A wide sweeping
curve along the river's west bank looks suitable for sowing; the tree line
is forty-feet back and the bank is high and sun should wash the plantation
for eight hours each day.
I nudge the bow
into shore. Kinsey steps out in a hunker, unsure where grass ends and firm
earth begins.
"I'm afraid
of like, falling through." She lifts the anchor out and drops it on shore,
then tightens the drawstrings of the hood, pulling it gnome-ishly tight around
her face, with a pointy peak at the top. She takes up the bag of seeds and
pulls out ten or twelve striped ones and cups them in the palm of her hand.
"Okay, like,
let's go."
"You in a hurry?"
"No. But the
mosquitoes are gonna' start coming if we don't get moving."
I, who like playing
a role of provocateur as an unhurried Dad, say, "I'm just waiting to
see if they're coming."
Kinsey, who is just
starting new life and revving high on all cylinders and has yet to find any
of this fun, sullies my suggestion with a sneer and bad-tempered body English.
"Why? So we
can be even more miserable?"
We plant three or
four seeds at three-foot intervals and cover about fifty feet. It'll be great
to cruise past here on the hot days of July and August and enjoy non-native
yellow flowers, big and cheery and blooming with life.
4:10-
Back at the boat
landing.
"You want to
go get the car?" I don't know if she has ever backed a trailer on a car
before, but figure she must've by her quick "sure." Or she hasn't
remembered there's a trailer attached to back up at the back of the car. Whichever,
I'm impressed with her good-natured endurance of a not-very-nice time we've
had so far. I wait by the dock while she disappears through the woods toward
the car.
The first to appear
at the curve from the trees is a blare of red brake lights as the trailer
races in reverse toward a tree. The trailer stops short, and I'm pleased.
Brake lights shut off and the trailer rolls slowly ahead out of sight. Then
it and the car reappear through a break in the brush, turning left and stopping
nose-into-the-woods, with the trailer angled ninety degrees to the car.
Two charming young
men had pulled out their boat ahead of us and were attending to securing it
fast in the parking area where Kinsey was performing her work. They had graduated
high school three or four years earlier and had about them an air of testosterone
and drove a lofty purple pickup truck with big fully engorged tires.
Daughter reverses
again. Brake lights flash and my car turns to her right and stops too close
to their boat. Young men jump to the side. Both young men saunter over to
her side window and talk down at it for a few moments. I expect them to give
her some assistance, to pick up the trailer and set it down in a more expedient
position. Or pull ahead so Kinsey can circle around and drive forward down
to the landing.
No. They saunter
back to work in the middle of the lot.
I catch glimpses
of white trailer moving and red brake lights beaming. Then I see nothing for
a few minutes and wonder if she's left the whole damn mess on the floor and
run off with the pair.
The front of my
car accelerates out of a stand of birch saplings. Fast. Around the curve,
light empty trailer leaping high out of potholes. Daughter pulls up where
I stand.
"So, I'm like,
maybe they'll move when they see me get in the car. But noooo! They didn't
have any intention of moving and like, just sat there and messed around with
what they were doing. And whatever. So I turn on the car and just sat there
and tried to like figure out what I was doing, ya know? Back up, go forward
and all this psycho craziness. Did you see? So then they're both staring at
me like, 'what are you doing?' And, um, I'm like, 'how do you suggest I do
this?' because I don't know how to do this. I'm like one of them said,
'well, we'll move. Then you can like turn around.' And I'm like, 'thank you.'
But when I felt like an idiot was when I was doing all this backing up and
going forward like, I didn't know what I was doing."
I'm proud she didn't
give up.
She pulls through
her turn and begins backing the trailer toward the ramp. The trailer wanders
too far right. She stops and crimps the car's front tires all the way right.
Then resumes backing. The trailer responds correctly and diverges back toward
the water. Nearing the concrete, her face peering back out of the car
window outcries in anguish, but she's doing everything instinctively
right. The trailer is just taking longer to respond than she likes.
"C'mon back.
You're doing fine!"
"Dad!"
"No. You're
doing fine. Turn the wheels ... no the other way!"
She cranks, eases
off the brakes, and the trailer eases back. Though slightly closer to the
dock than I'd like.
"Turn the Wheels!
No, the other way." The trailer tires enter the river. "Okay, now
straighten them out. Yep!"
The trailer is too
close to the dock for a normal loading. It would do, but the rear of the car
is poised to roll onto the pier.
"Aghh!"
she howls. "I'm gonna' kill myself!"
"Go ahead.
Just a bit."
Tires spin, heap
piles of gravel, and two trenches are dug. But the trailer moves back to a
good place and so does the car.
My daughter, from
the front seat, is berating herself for being inept, not knowing how to execute
a skill she's never been called on to perform. But I am filled with admiration
for fortitude that refused to let her quit.
"Go ahead.
Turn the wheel that way no the other way."
She's watching me
closely and doing exactly as I say.
"Now ease back.
Keep the wheels no, don't turn them. Keep going."
"But the car's..."
"No, you're
fine. Keep going. Right there! Perfect."
Daughter looks at
me with exhaustion. Then grins big. "I didn't understand how hard that
could be. I had no idea how hard that would be."