« Around The 'Sphere | Main | Where is Part IV of Pillars of Government Week? »
October 13, 2006
Happy Birthday
Via the Armorer, we are reminded that today is an important day:
We would be remiss if ever we forgot They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships (h/t Moleskinerie):
"As I was searching through our family's Samsonite suitcase full of photographs, I came across a small black and white print, no larger than a baseball card, with two red lipstick prints smeared across the back. Besides these marks made by some once-supple lips, there were no names, dates or messages inscribed. I flipped the picture over to find the soft, dark eyes of a sailor staring back at me. He had full lips curved in a slight smile to rival La Gioconda, a small, handsome nose, and a neck as thick as a young oak. His hair glistened with pomade, as black and shiny as our Steinway, and at his collar, above his neckerchief, you could see a bit of his dark chest hair. His skin was smooth and unblemished; he looked no older than 19. The picture was battered, and the edges worn soft from handling. The photograph must have been taken in the 1940's or early 1950's, given the paper's amber hue and his coiffure.I was bewitched, caught in the snare of his eyes staring through 50 years. Who was this handsome sailor? I asked everyone in the house if they recognized him. Could he be a relative? Could I have met the old, stooped correlative of this shining youth at some family reunion? It was unlikely that he was a blood relative, given his Italianate looks; perhaps he was some relative's husband. No one recognized him. There were no other pictures of him in the suitcase, no other gelatin prints testifying to the beauty of this face in our family's baggage of fading faces and forgotten times. Who was he? Someone's sweetheart, loved and lost or loved and forgotten? How had he ended up here?
Oh, give us a sailor anytime, strong and bronzed and handsome and smelling faintly of the salt air and bay rhum. Give us the acrid smell of steam in our nostrils and the sight of a destroyer heading into port at long last, flags snapping crisply in the breeze and all hands on deck. Give us the sight of dress whites on a hot summer night, enough to make a girl swoon with desire.
Give us a silent prayer as the fiery sun dips below the horizon:
Our Father who art in Washington
Please dear father let me stay,
Do not drive me now away
Wipe away my scalding tears
And let me stay for Thirty Years
Please forgive me all my past
And things that happened at the mast
Do not my request refuse
And let me stay another cruise
Two hundred thirty one years of faithful and honorable service. May America never forget.
Posted by Cassandra at October 13, 2006 10:21 AM
Comments
Now that's a cake I can jump out of, Cass! WOOT!
You ROCK!
Oh... and so do Sailors, whom without, we'd have no reason to hoist mainsails, eat in the galley, or walk the plank with!
Posted by: Were-Kitten at October 13, 2006 11:31 AM
I have to laugh, Were-Kitten.
I can never forget being all of twelve or thirteen years old and full of my newfound and mysterious womanhood in Newport RI, walking downtown to school every day.
Sailors used to slow down in their cars and wolf whistle at me as I walked, and I would blush furiously (which only egged them on), but I *loved* it. Of course I pretended to be all grown up and not notice. If they didn't whistle too much or politely said hi, I would say hello back and keep walking, trying not to make too much eye contact because they were so full of themselves. And I know they couldn't tell how young I was because I looked a lot older than my age.
But they were never rude to me, that I do remember. It was all in fun, and I was never scared of them. They were just boisterous and rowdy and full of the joy of being alive and for the first time in my life I felt like a woman though I was still a young girl. That is a memory I will hold in my heart when I am an old lady and all my looks are gone, and I will cherish it.
Posted by: Cassandra at October 13, 2006 11:57 AM
Splice the Main Brace!
Posted by: spd rdr at October 13, 2006 01:38 PM