rough draft 4 minutes memoir

Jennifer is starting a memoir about our time sailing with Hilary. This is a four-minute piece, when read out loud, that Jennifer wrote for a seminar she attended. The event described took place in 2016.

Date: Friday, May 3, 2019 at 1:35 PM

Topic: rough draft 4 minutes memoir

Hilary is my mother.

At the deepest extent of our swing we were in over 60 feet, but when the tide reversed we had drifted and settled such that our keel was two feet above the bottom. The next low was forecast to be three feet lower, so John and I set up a double anchor system, one off the bow in deeper water and the Danforth off the stern in shallower. We could thus pull ourselves out into deeper water if the clearance between the bottom of the keel and the ground grew too nervous-making for me. Positioned in this way, with the golden sun filtering down through the clear water and hints of fantastic wildlife just around every bush and boulder, John started the task of fixing the Webasto heater.

I was looking through the binoculars at shore watching for bears or another wolverine, and Hilary was puttering in her way: untying the stopper knots in the jib sheets and coiling the lines into kinks. Why not let her, I thought, as we weren’t traveling that day and it was so serene and lovely.

John’s task went south in a hurry. The heater tube was bashed and shredded, and the home-made mount installed by a previous owner delaminated into five separate planks, having been cobbled together, John discovered to his rage, from a kitchen cutting board chopped down to size.

It’s never comfortable to be around someone who is livid. My early childhood experience had taught me that being quietly somewhere else was the way to go, and I was on my way to the only other place on the boat, 20 feet forward on the deck, when I saw that Hilary had the Basura in her lap and was going through it with her hands.

To keep the head on our boat from clogging, we never put any kind of paper into it, always putting the soiled toilet paper or wipes into the plastic bag hanging next to the seat. This we called the Basura. It was the first bag to go ashore whenever we docked anywhere with trash facilities. Hilary had it now and was deconstructing the full bag.

She was methodically unfolding paper brown with feces and spreading the tissue smooth on her lap. John was in a fury over the rapidly multiplying repairs. Hilary had picked up on the heightened emotion and was agitated, clucking and muttering to herself.

I was horrified. I’ve never been a fan of poo, and this sudden feces fest arising as it did concurrent with the rage of the repair put me into a panic.

“Hilary, dear, please give me that, we use that in the toilet.”

Hilary tightened her lips and bit off the words “No. It’s mine.”

“Hilary, It’s poo. I need to put this all away and put it into the bathroom, where it belongs. It’s the Basura.” I was rapidly running all the way out to the end of my sanity tether to the place where I, too was not in my right mind.

Hilary tightened up and gathered even more of the soiled paper from the bag, rummaging and stirring it like she might pull the winning number from it on the next go-around. She snarled at me. “It’s MINE.”

I screamed. “Hilary! It’s shit! Put it BACK into the bag! “

I tried to sweep all of the paper into the bag but she was much too quick for me. She darted with her right hand to retrieve the brown bits of paper and grabbed hard to the plastic bag with the other. Her eyes were flinty little shards of glass and her chin jutted out with a ferocity that made me afraid. She was strong and fast and demented and I might just lose this battle.

John stepped in. “Hilary. Hilary. This is feces and it’s unsafe for you.”

“No, it’s unsafe for YOU.”

“You need to give the bag and the paper to Jennifer.”

“That’s what YOU say.”

John was already angry but never angry at Hilary. “You have to grow up, Hilary, you’re not a child. This is filth, it’s not safe for you, and Jennifer needs to put it away.”

I was struggling with her, trying to grab the Basura and the papers, and was pushing her arms and hands around, gripping her to break her hold on the basura. “Hilary! What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“YOU’RE what’s wrong with me!”

“Hilary, this is shit! You’re the queen of shit! Fuck it, goddamn it!” I was screaming and starting to cry.

What the hell was wrong with me? Who, now, was the irrational one?

John pointed to the bow. “Go there, Jennifer, I’ll finish this. Hilary, give it to me now, you’re going to stop acting like a child. NOW.”

With a haughty sniff she threw it down at her feet. “If you want it so much, have it. I don’t want it any more.”

John quickly swept the paper into the bag and the bag behind his back. “Hilary, it’s a beautiful day, why don’t you sit here in the sun while I go talk to Jennifer?”

She beamed at him. “Oh, yes! It’s so lovely!”

I was at the front of the boat, weeping. I was a monster. She had dementia, she was a loving woman in the grip of a wicked situation, she was not in control, and she deserved to be treated far better, all the time. What I had said to her was unforgivable. And yet —

John came up and wiped my tears away. “Are you crying for her?” he said, sadly and tenderly.

“NO!” I blubbered “Even worse! I’m crying for ME!”

Later I sat next to her and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Hilary. I yelled at you and was very rude to you. I should not have done or said any of that. I apologize.”

She patted my hand and it was clear she remembered none of it. But she knew what to say in that sort of situation. “Oh, you know it’s all right. I do love you so.”

“I love you too, Hilary.”