Van Gogh, Van Sandy

20x24 oil

My mom’s third husband was a guy named John, who was ten years younger than she was. He had thick, wavy hair and muscles like Sylvester Stallone. He could surf, he could water ski on bare feet, he could free-dive to eighty feet and stay down for close to three minutes. He was once stranded on French Frigate Shoals for thirty days, and weighed ninety pounds when he was rescued. And except for one gaping character flaw, he was everything I, at thirteen, wanted to be.

His flaw, though, was a big one: it was impossible to truly know him … because he wouldn't allow it.

But for a few years in my life, he could do no wrong. My sisters never saw it that way, but I sure did. I liked him. I was on top of the world when mom said she was going to marry him.

We lived on O’ahu at the time. John worked at the Hawaiian Village Hotel in Waikiki, running the water ski operation. He was then, and had always been, a man of the sea. His skin was a deep red-brown, colored by a lifetime in the sun. And when he moved, it was in a smooth, slow, don't-bother-me kind of way. Most of the time a Marlboro hung from his half-parted lips, his eyes squinting through the smoke, like Clint Eastwood.

We moved from Oahu to the Big Island soon after Mom and John were married. We traveled by boat -- a thirty-eight foot deep-sea charter fishing boat that made me sicker than I'd ever been in my life. My sisters took a plane. But Mom and I made the two-day trip with John and his new fully-rigged haole sampan, gliding over glassy seas in the lee of the islands and battering through the channels between them, channels that threw the boat around like a cork in a hurricane.

John was in heaven.

My mother was oblivious, a newly-wed caught up in the Big Bopper singing "Chantilly Lace" on the boat's radio.

I was sickly green, dehydrated, and barely human.

Two days later we cruised into Kailua-Kona in the calm lee of mount Hualalai. There, in the shade of groves of coconut trees that lined the shore, was my new home, a serene, turquoise-bayed fishing village where John was going to be a charter boat skipper. The sun was more brilliant there than in any other place I'd ever been. It made the glassy water in the harbor sparkle. You could have called it paradise, because it just about was.

And there I stood on the pier, the heir apparent to John's wealth of maritime knowledge.

Day after day I followed him around, watching him, mimicking his movements. I walked like John. I scowled like John. I made John remarks to my sisters, terse and sarcastic. I carried my T-shirt hanging from the back pocket of my shorts and squinted into the sun like I'd been on the ocean all my life.

I watched him in the way a cat watches a dove peck around in the grass, studying every move, every pause, every subtle mannerism.

My mother practically begged him to let me work as his deck hand. John snorted and told her I was too small. He needed someone with muscle, and someone who knew the ocean. But Mom persisted, and in the end, her wish was granted.

I got the job.

I was a deck hand on a deep-sea charter fishing boat, the youngest -- and smallest -- in the Kona fleet. All the other skippers and their first-rate deck hands were kind and supportive, always smiled and waved at me from the decks of their boats. One of them even told me I looked like a miniature Tarzan, which I loved to hear, because John looked like Tarzan.

The major part of my job, I soon realized, took place between getting up in the morning and heading out to sea three hours later. Then, for the next eight hours, I did little more than go for a boat ride ... unless we caught a fish. Then I sat at the wheel and tried to keep the angler's line behind the boat.

I was a spectator.

Because that's when the muscle came in, and the sea smarts ... which, of course, I didn't have. John reminded me of that almost daily, in all sorts of unspoken ways. But who cared? I was working. On a boat. We caught big fish -- close to a thousand pounds, sometimes.

The first week I did nothing but handle the dock lines, tying and untying the boat at the pier. I became an expert at slinging a clove hitch over a cleat, a skill I still have today.

Then I got to sponge the salt from the seats and windows at the beginning and end of each day. And that, I began to realize, was all I was going to get. John was accommodating my mother, not training a deck hand.

But I wanted to prove that I was good enough. Way down deep and unknown to me at the time, I needed to prove I was good enough.

I figured I could start by doing more to get the boat ready in the mornings. So I studied John's routine until it was as clear as the resin in his prized lures: The night before, check the two-gallon bucket of water in the freezer; get up at five in the morning and work the ice out of the bucket, then put the ice on the back seat of the Jeep; refill the bucket and put it back in the freezer for the next day’s ice; take a couple of six-packs of Coke and Budweiser from the storage closet and set them in the Jeep next to the ice; unscrew the five-horse outboard engine from its saw-horse stand, and throw it in the Jeep, too; at the harbor, take the ice and put it on your hand, like a waiter carrying a tray of dishes; grab the outboard with the other hand and walk down to the skiff; set the ice on the floorboards of the skiff; secure the outboard to the skiff’s transom, fire it up with its pull-cord, and buzz on out into the harbor to get the boat, moored out in the bay.

This was what John did, day after day. It seemed simple enough. I could do all of that. I asked him if I could take over the job of the ice and the outboard.

John squinted at me a moment, smoke drifting off the end of a cigarette hanging from his lips. Then he shrugged, and said, "I don't care." That's all he had to say about it, nothing more, nothing less.

Yes! I thought. I'll do the ice just like he did it. When I get that down, he'd let me do more. He'd see that I could be a good, strong deck hand, that I had muscles and brains.

That night, I checked the ice bucket. Put a little more water in it, filled it to the brim. Got the Coke and the beer and put them in the garage near the outboard. Easy. No sweat.

John banged on my bedroom door at five the next morning, just like always. Boom! One time. That's all I ever got. No words. I heard it or I didn't. If I didn't, he'd leave me behind without a second thought.

I got up instantly, a habit I developed then, and cling to even to this day.

I couldn't get the ice out of the bucket. I kicked it, I twisted it, I pounded it on the ground, I swore at it, but it wouldn't budge. John suddenly appeared at my side and pushed me out of the way. Without saying a word, he took an ice pick and chiseled an inch of ice off the top, all the way around, leaving a space between the lip of the bucket and the block of ice. Then he turned the bucket over and dropped it on the ground.

The ice popped out.

You needed to leave a drop-space around the top of the bucket. Simple. Part of where the brains came in. John hadn't told me that, and I hadn't figured it out. He picked up the ice and put it in the Jeep. Then the outboard and the drinks. When we got to the pier, he took both the ice and the engine down to the skiff himself.

The next day I did it right, got the ice out of the bucket and put it in the Jeep. Then the outboard engine. It was heavy. I wasn't sure I could carry both the ice and the outboard at the same time when we got to the harbor.

On the way, I decided I would only take the ice, at least until I could do that much without screwing up. I told that to John when we got there. He shook his head and grabbed the engine and started walking toward the skiff. No words had passed his lips since the night before, when he told me to do the ice right this time.

I took the ice off the back seat, and, as John always did, raised it to my shoulder on the palm of my hand. I started following him, walking slow and easy, in John’s cool, don't-bother-me way, which I had mastered. It wasn't far to the skiff, maybe thirty or forty yards.

About half way there, my hand started feeling like it was on fire. It froze so badly it burned. I had to switch hands. I ended up carrying the ice cradled between both arms, nestled against my chest. When we got to the skiff, I dropped the ice down onto the floorboards and jammed my hands into the warm ocean, and let them sting until I could move my fingers again.

John fired up the outboard and headed out into the harbor, silent and sullen as a flat tire.

I spent the next eight hours being angry at myself, wondering how I was ever going to carry the ice and the outboard from the Jeep to the skiff at the same time. The ice was just too cold to carry in one hand, that far, at John's impossibly slow pace. I didn't know how he could do it, except that his hands were thick and leathery from fishing all his life. Mine were as soft as raw squid. Once, the ice burned me so badly that I had to set it down on the hood of a truck ... just for a second ... while I buried my hands in my armpits. John stopped, and looked back at me, and shook his head.

And I knew I was losing ground.

After a couple of weeks of murdering my screaming hands, I came up with a brilliant solution. I put a canvas fish glove on ... then carried the dumb ice. It worked. So simple, and well worth the scorn I figured John would pour all over me for being so sissy as to have to put on a glove.

But he didn't say a word about it. Not even a grunt. In fact, I don't think he even noticed. I was trying so hard to be like him, trying to live up to this self-imposed manly goal of carrying ice with my bare hand, when the reality of it all suddenly hit me -- who cared?

Certainly not John. He didn't care how I carried the ice, just as long as I got it to the boat.

Only I cared. Me. Just me. And I was making myself miserable because of it.

I learned something important from that unforgiving block of ice. Problem was, I didn’t learn it until years later. Looking back, I can so clearly see how hard I tried -- for years -- to please others rather than myself, always searching for that elusive outside “approval,” as if my life had no value without the permission of others. Half my life bumbled by before I finally understood how foolish, if not impossible, that search was.

When I paint, or write, or make music … of course I want others to like it, even love it. But if no one does, that’s okay. My joy and my self worth are no longer tied to external validation. I do what I do because what I do is who I am. I do what I do to engage with my life, to experience it, to honor the greatest gift I was ever given.

I am alive. We are alive. Is that alone not the greatest of wonders? Do any of us really need someone else to tell us how big that is?