It’s the first heat wave of the year in Baltimore, where the humidity thickens the air like gravy, and every breath feels like you’re inhaling the city’s smog. But we’re not in the city this morning; we are out on the bay on my father’s boat, and the cool breeze whips by us, and through us, as we accelerate away from the marina past the no-wake zone. 

Back on shore, there is tension in every interaction. Even when no words are spoken, when you pass by a stranger, there is a look in the eyes if you are wearing a mask, or if you aren’t. Out here on the water, we’re all unmasked, the bay breeze in our faces, lifting our germs and fears up into the atmosphere, away. We smile and wave when we pass other boaters; we don’t care what their beliefs are, their political stances, what rules they did or didn’t follow these last fifteen months, if they’ve been vaccinated. Out here we are all boaters, all equal, all free of restraints. 

I am happy to be out here, yes, but I am happiest for my father, for whom the inability to captain his boat has been an incarceration. Five years before we had heard of COVID-19, he lost the love of his life, my mother. The suddenness of her death seemed to stretch the length of our grieving into an indefinite timeline, an era, almost. We continued on with life, but in an altered state, aware of others lightly treading around our fragility. A few years passed before my father announced to me at dinner one night that he thought he had reached the stage of acceptance, that he wanted to try and move on. 

He and my mother had had a plan for his retirement – he would finish his thirty some years at the machine shop he supervised and use the money he’d saved to buy a boat. They would live on it, maybe, or at least have a bed in the cabin below for long weekends away. The boat, though not yet purchased, already had a name. It was named for me, or rather, I was named for it. They chose my name – Andrea Rose – because it was the most beautiful boat name, my father had said upon my birth. All my life I had known that one day I would share that name with the boat my father dreamt of. We had boats, growing up – but not the Andrea Rose. That name was reserved for “the” boat, the one he would work his entire life for, the big one. 

Even though it had been their dream together, he would not, could not, give it up, and so one day he called me and told me he found the perfect boat, and we drove across the Bay Bridge to pick it up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. 

The first year or two owning a boat, all boaters will tell you, is all about working out the kinks. You’ve got to get a feel for the engine, the anchor, the thrusters. It had been years since my father had captained a boat, so he also had to reacquaint himself with his dearest Chesapeake Bay: her stormy moods and changing depths, her inlets and coves, the lighthouses and landmarks along her shores. It took some time for my father to court her, to reestablish that bond they had when he was younger. And at the end of that first season, we watched as the Andrea Rose was pulled from the water, winterized for the off-season, and knew we would start anew with confidence the next year.

The Andrea Rose was scheduled to be released back to our dock slip in early April of 2020, but by mid-March, the pandemic had forced shutdowns across the country, and we were all ushered inside. Unless you could prove that boating was the way you made your living (with a commercial license), you could not take your boat out; it could not be rebirthed into the Bay for the season. I wanted to shout to everyone that boating was essential to my father, that it was his way of life, that he had nothing else, no one else, that he needed this. But instead, we waited. 

The wait was long, especially the long stretch of months in the beginning when I couldn’t see my father for fear of exposing him – he was over sixty five, he had recently had a heart attack, he had severe asthma – all of the risk factors. I couldn’t see him, but I could picture him, alone in the house he had shared with my mother. But we made it through the solitude, the waiting, and now, we are vaccinated, the Andrea Rose is ready for the season, and we are, too. 

My father is at the wheel, giving me a rundown of all the improvements he’s made to the boat over the last few months, the new things he has discovered about her. I’m in my seat, the one reserved for his first mate, with my toddler in my lap, and my husband is at the stern. My daughter starts fussing; she’s gotten used to the boat already over the last few weekends and likes to walk around proclaiming, “it’s wobbly!” while she squats and steps barefoot with her newfound chubby sea legs. Dad sets the auto-pilot and strings up the fishing lines with lures, casts them into the water and rests them in the holders at the stern. 

The fish aren’t biting, he says, and I can see that, my eyes fixed on the tips of the fishing rods, watching for movement. My eyes have been trained from a young age to distinguish the difference between the tug of the current, the frustration of a snag on the bottom, or the quick, jabbing pull of a biting fish. The tips of the rods are arching slowly, consistently, with the current. The fish are not biting. 

I wonder if the fish noticed that there were less boats last season, only the commercial fishermen permitted to troll these waters. Us recreational fishermen and women were all quarantined. Perhaps the fish, too, have been living in the dark, murky waters, unable to comprehend why their routine was so vastly changed so suddenly, so dramatically, without warning. Maybe they just need some time to adjust, I think. 

My daughter, at two, does not have the patience for fishing. At home, she has a magnetic fishing rod in her bathtub and she can snatch a corresponding plastic fish with a gentle dip of the rod, giggling with joy and shouting, “again!” She doesn’t understand the game of waiting. So we abandon our fishing efforts after some time and decide to take a dip instead. 

My father watches his depth as he navigates, until we’ve only got a few feet of water under us, a good spot to hop in. I stay on the boat and watch as my husband hops in, quickly popping his head up to tell us how chilly the water is. The air has warmed on the east coast already, but the water isn’t quite there yet. There is a hint of salt in the air, as the fresh water that enters the bay from its rivers and streams mixes with the salt water of the Atlantic.

My father jumps in now, but he doesn’t pop up right away. My daughter squeals, “Pop’s in the water!” and I laugh and hug her tight around her life vest. Then he surfaces, plants his feet on the sandy bottom, wiping the hair away from his forehead, and reaching his arms up into the sky like a young boy. 

“Feel good?” I ask, still laughing. He smiles wide, exclaims, “it’s been awhile!”

He has emerged.