Sailin' Away
Leavin' my family, leavin' all my friends
My body's at home but my heart's in the wind
Where the clouds are like headlines on a new front page sky
Tears are salt water and the moon's full and high
And I know Joe Conrad is gonna be proud of me
Many before me who've been called by the sea
To be up in the crow's nest and singin' my say
And shiver me timbers I'm a-sailin' away--Tom Waite
It was an icy day in January, much like this one, that my late mother, Rusty, gathered up about seven pairs of shoes, the handset to the cordless phone, and the lockbox and went and jumped in Logan Martin lake in her housecoat.
You know what? I understand why now. At the time, I didn't. At the time, it was because she was paranoid and delusional, which she happened to be. For weeks, she thought Dad, the Baffled King, was trying to poison her, and she had been drinking enormous quantities of water--gallons of it daily. She thought my brother's wife was pregnant with the devil's child. That morning, as i was getting ready to go into work, she stuck her head in the bathroom where I was putting on my make up, gasped, and ran off. She didn't see me. Instead, she saw the Devil Himself. I heard some movements, then the front door quietly shut.
I had not left the house when the phone rang and it was our neighbor. "Your Mother's out in the middle of the lake", she said breathlessly, "I think she is trying to drown herself or something. She's got a bunch of shoes and a phone and a box and is yelling something."
I will spare you further details of how Rusty got fished out of the lake, sans shoes and phone. The lock box, which contained the house mortgage, insurance papers, and everybody's birth certificates and burial policies, was retrieved because it somehow floated.
Yes, she wound up committed for a psychotic break. But what was never spoken was what I believe to be true. She was trying to escape the crushing disappointment, the stark disillusionment, her life had become. Sometimes life just beats us down so damn hard and so completely we just got to get the hell away with what we can carry, even if it is seven pairs of shoes, a handset to a phone, and a box. Even if we are in a housecoat and a lake is between us and what we perceive as relief, as freedom from the pain we are in.
Sometimes you just want to go sailin' away.
My body's at home but my heart's in the wind
Where the clouds are like headlines on a new front page sky
Tears are salt water and the moon's full and high
And I know Joe Conrad is gonna be proud of me
Many before me who've been called by the sea
To be up in the crow's nest and singin' my say
And shiver me timbers I'm a-sailin' away--Tom Waite
It was an icy day in January, much like this one, that my late mother, Rusty, gathered up about seven pairs of shoes, the handset to the cordless phone, and the lockbox and went and jumped in Logan Martin lake in her housecoat.
You know what? I understand why now. At the time, I didn't. At the time, it was because she was paranoid and delusional, which she happened to be. For weeks, she thought Dad, the Baffled King, was trying to poison her, and she had been drinking enormous quantities of water--gallons of it daily. She thought my brother's wife was pregnant with the devil's child. That morning, as i was getting ready to go into work, she stuck her head in the bathroom where I was putting on my make up, gasped, and ran off. She didn't see me. Instead, she saw the Devil Himself. I heard some movements, then the front door quietly shut.
I had not left the house when the phone rang and it was our neighbor. "Your Mother's out in the middle of the lake", she said breathlessly, "I think she is trying to drown herself or something. She's got a bunch of shoes and a phone and a box and is yelling something."
I will spare you further details of how Rusty got fished out of the lake, sans shoes and phone. The lock box, which contained the house mortgage, insurance papers, and everybody's birth certificates and burial policies, was retrieved because it somehow floated.
Yes, she wound up committed for a psychotic break. But what was never spoken was what I believe to be true. She was trying to escape the crushing disappointment, the stark disillusionment, her life had become. Sometimes life just beats us down so damn hard and so completely we just got to get the hell away with what we can carry, even if it is seven pairs of shoes, a handset to a phone, and a box. Even if we are in a housecoat and a lake is between us and what we perceive as relief, as freedom from the pain we are in.
Sometimes you just want to go sailin' away.