So we have taken the boat out several times.
The closest water to us is the Willamette River (actually, that’s not technically true, as we live within two minutes of the lake after which the city of Lake Oswego is named, but Lake Oswego is a small private lake with enormous fees associated with putting your boat in the water if you do not actually live on the lake, and no . . . we do not actually live on the lake), so we have been putting our boat in the closest free water, which is the Willamette River.
Willamette is pronounced will-AM-it, which is just so stupid I can hardly stand it, but it is apparently a Native American word and mocking of the Native Americans and their dumb-ass made-up words seems unwise as I am pretty sure Native American spirits live within the river and are all roiled up and pissed off about all things greedy white-people related, because white people are historically rather hoggish about taking more than their share, and in fact, seem pretty clear that their share is every fucking thing.
Sorry, Native Americans.
Newsflash . . . Hoggish white people are everywhere up here in Oregon, and in Lake Oswego especially, and it is really rather spectacular (especially after living in Vallejo, where I never needed to worry about losing my children in a crowd, because . . . well, just because).
What? It’s true.
Also . . . I totally had to go back and substitute “Native Americans” for “Indians,” because it occurred to me I was being politically incorrect.
Every single time I think of political correctness with respect to Native Americans, I remember Kallan’s preschool celebration of Thanksgiving, in which no mention of Pilgrims or Indians or even Thanksgiving itself was allowed because a mother the year before had gone bonkers ape-shit about how Thanksgiving was a celebration of an evil racist agenda and she and her child were having NONE OF IT and so no one else at the school could have any of it either unless they were willing to acknowledge that they were racist and white-supremey, and as it turned out no one was all delighted to be called racist and white-supremey and so they all cowered in white-pussied guilty fear beneath the very short preschool tables while this mother discussed how everyone could be grateful for shit, but they could not give thanksgiving for shit and from then on there was no Thanksgiving for preschoolers.
I always sort of thought it was ironic that the preschool’s holiday celebration of Thanksgiving fell to bullying, but no one asked me.
OK, now that I am all politically corrected, back to the part about how the spirits of Native Americans live in the river and drag white people to their doom.
What?
Now I am remembering that one time I got an email (from that very same woman who was having none of Thanksgiving, now that I think of it, and so I should have been wary at the time, but I was all lulled and placid and not expecting to be dragged below the currents), and so I clicked on the link that suggested I could “find out more about myself.”
Click.
What followed was a lengthy series of images of baby and toddlers of all sorts. As each image played across the screen, I was asked to make a very quick judgment about the attractiveness of the child pictured.
So here’s a weird thing about me . . . I am not all that drawn to babies or toddlers. I have never found babies to be the least bit adorable. Toddlers are just annoying and slime-covered. I do not find young children appealing or attractive in any way. I loved my own daughters as babies and toddlers very much, and I thought they were gorgeous beyond compare, but every other baby and toddler in the world? Not so much.
So I clicked through all these photos, making judgments based not on my personal calculations of attractiveness (which would have earned every single image a lowish score) but on how much the image reminded me of my own children (who I had found very attractive as babies and toddlers because they were my own children and seriously, if I had NOT found them attractive, there is little chance they would have survived those early incredibly irritating years).
This basically meant that I gave high scores to all the little blond white girls.
Ahem.
When the test was over, there was a huge flashing message of doom and dismay on my screen about my racist white-supremey preferences.
Delete.
OK, back to the part where I am all politically corrected and we are taking our boat out on the Willamette River instead of the private whitish lake.
Rivers are more mischievous than lakes in personality, what with their currents and their tides and their freighters and their rocky outcroppings and their floating moving debris and their swirling angry Native American spirits of malevolence.
Also . . . I am a paranoid loon where deep moving water is concerned.
So my boating plan when the river is involved is as follows . . . Launch the boat and then get in the boat and then leave the dock and then move across the surface of the water in slow gliding fashion, taking care to create no wake whatsoever and taking care to disturb no river spirits and preferably keeping the dock in sight at all times. Then eat a sandwich and float lazily for a bit and then pull the boat into the dock and load it up on the trailer and then dawdle about for a bit at the dock, enjoying the awesomeness of boat ownership while relishing the feel of solid ground beneath your feet and then call it a day.
Here is Mark and Maj and Kallan’s plan for the boat on the river . . . ZOOM as fast as you can fucking zoom as far as you can fucking zoom until you have used up half of the gas in the boat’s tanks and then fucking ZOOM as fast as you can back to the dock, making extraordinarily terrifying evasive maneuvers around other more sensible boats as they get in your way.
EEK!
Here are the girls asking me questions, screaming them over the roar of the boat’s motor . . .
“CAN WE GET INNER TUBES TO DRAG BEHIND THE BOAT?”
“No!”
“CAN WE LEARN TO WATER-SKI?”
“No!”
“CAN WE BUY ONE OF THOSE GIANT INFLATABLE TOYS THAT HOLD MORE THAN ONE PERSON TO DRAG BEHIND THE BOAT?”
“No!”
“CAN DADDY PARK THE BOAT IN THE WATER SO WE CAN GET OUT AND SWIM?”
“NO!”
The thought of letting the girls get out of the boat to swim in the depths of the Willamette River terrifies me . . . I just know they are going to be dragged beneath the surface and whirled away by the currents and Mark and I will never see them again.
“WE ARE WEARING LIFE-JACKETS! WHY CAN’T WE SWIM?”
“Ummm . . . angry malevolent river-spirits upset about past injustices?”
“MOTHER, YOU MAKE NO SENSE!”
Ack.
As we finish up our boating for this day, Mark slows the boat as we near the small rocky beach that marks the entrance to the dock. The girls make one last plea to be able to jump from the boat out into the water, and Mark ignores my protests and agrees. He tells Maj and Kallan that they can swim to shore, a distance of perhaps 30 yards.
He cuts the motor, because he does not want them jumping from the boat while the motor is running, and we float in the water, now perhaps 25 yards from shore.
The girls do not simply jump into the water, because they are Maj and Kallan, and they never simply DO anything. First they have to argue about life-jackets and then they have to find their goggles and then they have to wonder where they put their hairbands and then they have to pull their hair back and then they have to put on their goggles and then they have to have an argument about who is jumping first and then they have to start yelling at one another and then I have to intervene and make them both sit back down in the boat and lecture them about being responsible boaters and pleasant human beings.
By the time I am done talking, we have drifted to within perhaps 10 yards from shore and Mark is pissed, “Are they jumping or not?”
The girls look to shore and see that we are now only about 8 yards out and they decide that it’s not worth getting wet for such a short swim and so never mind.
Mark stares at them, “Are you kidding me?”
Kallan crosses her arms, “We’re too close to shore now . . . what’s the point of swimming? We could just walk in from here. Who needs a boat to walk?”
Now we’re like 5 yards from shore and I can see the rocks of the river’s bottom, “Ummm, Mark? We need to get out into deeper water.”
Mark turns back to the front of the boat and reaches for the key, “You ladies annoy me.”
Now we’re like 2 yards from shore.
Mark turns the key, and the motor starts up.
The sound of a boat motor’s propellers hitting rocks? That’s not actually a good sound.
Mark turns off the motor and raises the outboard up out of the water and we glide to a scrapey stop atop the rocks.
Beached.
A giant piece of flotsam.
In about two feet of water.
Sigh.
We stare crabbily at one another.
We avoid eye contact with the swimmers and sunbathers and fishermen who line the beach on which we have stranded ourselves.
Sigh.
And then? As we are trying to decide who will get out and shove the boat into deeper water, there is a friendly voice.
“You guys need a push?”
A stocky dark-haired dark-skinned woman fishing from shore puts down her pole and starts walking out into the water toward us, “You guys missed the turn into the dock.” She indicates with her hand the path we need to take, “I see a lot of people mess up this turn.”
We do not share the story of obstinate uncooperative children and their inattentive bad-boating parents.
She reaches us and places firm hands on the boat and gives us a shove, “I’ve lived here forever, and I know this river . . . forever is how long it takes to know this river.”
The boat floats free of its rocky perch.
She walks with us, guiding our boat out into the deeper water until she is chest deep, and then she stands and waves as our boat drifts for a moment as Mark lowers and then starts the motor.
We wave back and yell, “Thank you!”
She smiles a toothless smile and then turns and starts swimming back to shore.
Swimming through the waters and the spirits of the Willamette River.
will-AM-it
Exactly so.
