My dad died when I was ten. I adored him. He made me feel like the smartest, sassiest kid in the world. In the photo above, I believe we're heading home from a summer drive to the country, perhaps stopping for hot dogs or ice cream. Dad is spiffy in a shirt and tie, jacketless casual, and the three children, scruffier. My sister, nine years older than me, peeks out from the backseat, while my brother, eleven years older, is on the ground with Dad and me. My mother is behind the camera insisting on a picture that none of us want. We look hot, irritated, ready to get this over with. I imagine my sister yelling, "Let's go already!"
In the Cleveland suburbs of the 1950s, the country was just around the corner. We'd roll down the windows and drive until the houses petered out, and we came to country roads with few street signs, other than occasional billboards for Camels or Black Label beer. It was quiet on Sundays, except for cows mooing, horses neighing, and now and then, a tractor rumbling. Every so often, Dad would stop the car, wait for an expressive moo, and yell "Moooo!" back, chuckling. Heavy, sweet scents of mown grass and hay tinged with manure wafted in through the windows and made us children drowsy in the back seat. Sometimes, a wayward bee buzzed into the car, and my mother would scream and swiftly shoo it out. Dad loved finding new roads to explore, and family restaurants to try, especially if they offered homemade peach pie.
After Dad died, everything changed. My life went from technicolor to gray. It took me a lifetime to understand what happened. Two years ago, I returned to Cleveland after fifty years away, to try to find out more about Dad and his family. All my life, I yearned for the nurturing that my mother wasn't able to give, and the vanished, unwavering love and support of my father. I hoped Cleveland might hold some answers.
I'm nearly finished with a first draft of my new book about that journey, and I'm thrilled. I still have revision and editing ahead, and I very much hope that when I'm done, you'll be interested in reading it!
If you'd like to learn more about my sailing adventures with my late husband and young daughter when we left everything behind and followed his lifelong dream to sail away, go here.