Three white lights

In navigation, three white lights vertically and red to right 
and green to left mean a tugboat and tow more than 200 
meters long is coming toward you.

That Thanksgiving night seems like it was more than a hundred years ago now. That night I learned what the loneliness of the ocean sailor is all about. We were delivering an 83-foot fish tender from Alaska to the Seattle area and Thanksgiving found us off Namu, British Columbia, about to enter Fitzhugh Sound.

Below in the galley we had a turkey we'd brought along cooking in the diesel stove. The odors wafting up through the house brought memories of their own. The boat rose and fell on a gentle swell as we entered the sound and I checked all the visible navigation aids against the chart to make sure we were far enough offshore and heading the way we wanted to go. With all signs good, I set the auto pilot and leaned back in the chair casually watching the dark water ahead. The VHF radio had barely issued a peep all day, but occasionally traffic on the Single Sideband disturbed the quiet in the wheehouse.

Then out of the buzz and garbled voices a clear one loudly called for a particular vessel. That vessel responded equally as clearly and suddenly a father at sea connected with his young son on the night of Thanksgiving. The father said he was on a tug off the coast of California near San Francisco; the son responded with an unhuh. And that was how the conversation went from there. The father  trying to coax any kind of conversation out of the boy he could, wanting that connection so desperately and the son unsure and shy answering in affirmative grunts and mumbles. Did you have a good dinner?  Uh huh.  Did you have turkey?  Yeah. Did you have mashed potatoes and gravy?  Mm hmm. Did you eat your vegetables? Ummm. The seaman laughed at that response.

But you could almost feel the desperation in the man's voice as he queried his son most likely wanting any sign at all that they were connected and he was appreciated. If it did come, I never heard it. In time the father said he had to go and the boy said OK and that was that. Given that a woman never came on I assumed this was a divorced father, as I was, which probably made the pain all the worse.

On and off through the night I thought of that father on the tug somewhere south of us, not even knowing which way it was headed. I replayed the conversation in my head and thought of my own son 2 years old at the time with whom I could not have even had that stilted conversation.

I actually thought of a song.  For a long time I thought it would be cool given the number of folks on the water around the world to write a series of country-western-type songs in the way of truck driving ballads but about work boats and the people on them. A tug with a tow longer than 200 meters shows three white lights vertically forward and I started on "The Three White Lights of Christmas." Perhaps fortunately for the world, I never got very far with it, but I have never lost the memory of that night on Fitzhugh Sound and that sailor's conversation with his son.

I guess on holidays no matter who we are or what our circumstance is, in one way or another we reach for family. I have spent many holidays alone since that night and in a way feel that kinship with mariners and in that understanding I know that every year somewhere in the world, there are sailors out on the big oceans trying to converse with a child across the waters and, one can hope, making that desired family connection.