1
My older brother Donny builds a boat out of wood and installs a motor in it. We haul it on a trailer to the Jersey shore and launch it. Then, motor thrumming, we make it out about half a mile when it springs a leak and begins to sink. As we get close to land, it sinks permanently and we all swim to shore.
2
Donny builds a canoe out of canvas and we take it to Shark River so we can paddle down the river into the inlet, which leads to the Atlantic Ocean. Donny and I are going to do this while his girlfriend Nancy and our two little sisters watch from high up on the rocks above the inlet.
It’s terribly windy and the waves are fierce. Donny tells me to be sure to head straight into them or we will be swamped and overturned. I’m at the front and he’s in the back steering.
Then the canoe springs a leak. Donny has to put all his effort into plugging the hole. It is up to me to paddle hard and straight into the oncoming waves.
This is one of the most exciting times of my life—an adventure with my brother Donny—and I have no fear.
We make it through the inlet, around the rock jetty, and successfully turn the canoe to head toward the beach. Getting out to pull the canoe to shore, I cut my foot on a rock—a minor casualty.
Afterwards Nancy and our sisters say it didn’t look as if we’d make it, that we disappeared from view behind the high waves. And that someone from the Coast Guard asked if we got caught on the river by accident. They didn’t think anyone would do this on purpose.
3
I’m in another canoe not built by my brother Donny, with my sister Laura and ten-year-old daughter, Blixy. Laura and I are both divorced, living next door to each other in apartments in Chatham, New Jersey. Our favorite place to go for walks is the Great Swamp, so we try canoeing there.
Shortly after we start out, I see spiders in the canoe, and I’m afraid that if one comes near me, I’ll overturn the canoe. I have a spider phobia.
Laura and Blixy let me out on a nearby island and I wait there until they come back around again to get me.
4
Laura and Blixy and I are in the canoe again on the Passaic River. We have left a car at each end of our trip, and expect to do the whole thing in a couple of hours.
At what we think is halfway, we eat our picnic lunch.
Two hours later, we are still paddling, still not in sight of our destination.
We do not know where the hell we are.
As we paddle past a golf course, we stop and hike up to a couple of golfers. They tell us we are far from our destination.
It is cold and getting dark. We are thirsty and hungry. We paddle on.
When we finally get to our car, we call Blixy’s grandma to tell her we’ll be late for dinner.
5
A couple years later, Laura and I are both in serious relationships again. She is already married to Jim and they have moved to Mahwah, New Jersey. Adrian and I join them to go canoeing near their new home on water we are unfamiliar with. We have Blixy with us, and Jim’s two younger children, in three canoes.
A few minutes after we begin our trip, all the canoes overturn.
Everyone gets wet, Adrian loses his cap, and the picnic lunch is destroyed. But we are all safe.
6
Many years later, Adrian buys a canoe.
“The canoe is for you,” he says. “I remember how you loved canoeing with your sister Laura.”
After several frightening spider encounters with the canoe in Tallahassee, Florida, Adrian learns that I don’t really like canoeing. He takes it out by himself after that, or with one of his sons when they come to visit.
7
That canoe is still in the yard behind the house, waiting for someone to take it on the water.