All Things Old Are New Again: On Holding and Being Held
By: John Walter
Tags: Relationships, Mental Health, Family, Self, Creativity

“I’m going sailing.”

“Stay in the harbour. It’s starting to blow up.”

At this point, I might have argued there was no wind at all or given some grumbly 15 yr old boy response.

My Granddad would not have said anything more. Once he had given his point of view, he never saw any need to elaborate, and I never witnessed him arguing with anyone.

I fetched the sail, rudder and life jacket from the boatshed and rowed myself out to the dinghy. All fitted up, I set sail and began crisscrossing the harbour. I was angry. The sea did not look too rough. I didn’t care that Grandpa had told me to stay in the harbour. The small swell looked like fun. So I started to tack my way out.

I learnt that afternoon that a swell that looks small from a distance becomes an entirely different animal when you are in it. Going forward into it was terrifying as each wave was a little bigger than the one before, and I started taking on water from the bow with each dip.

You would have thought I would simply turn around and get out of the situation as fast as I could.

Two things conflicted. First, it was the most exhilarating experience I had ever had. Secondly, the idea of turning around was even more terrifying. There would be a moment when I would be sideways to the waves, and the sail would be empty of wind. I imagined myself being tipped over and swimming fully clothed towards rocks that were being hammered by these massive waves.

Eventually, the fear of going forward overwhelmed the fear of turning back. I smashed the tiller across, ducked under the boom and prayed for the wind to kick into the canvas sail. It felt like an age, and it could have been less than a second. The next wave bore down on me just as the wind thundered into the sail and snapped the tiny craft around to face the harbour. I then surfed that wave; white hands gripped on tiller and sheet as I was delivered back to the safety of the harbour.

I navigated in and moored up in a state of shock. I bundled things into the tender and rowed back to the landing stage. I carted everything up into the boatshed and spread out the sail to dry. No one came to help me.

Image of a mangle by dagrimshaw from Pixabay

Back at the cottage, I left my deck shoes outside and walked into supper preparations. Nobody said a word. I put my wet clothes out the back under the tin roof next to the mangle. I went up to our bunk room and threw on something dry.

We ate simple, delicious food around the table and then played draughts and cards until we all went up to our beds. No one mentioned my sailing trip.

As I lay in the lower bunk, my older brother whispered to me from above.

“Grandad was watching you the whole time. As soon as you started going out of the harbour, he was on his way to the phonebox to call the coastguard. He took me with him. We then ran up to watch you from the cliff through binoculars. He told me he had scrambled the lifeboat crew, and they would be sitting there with the engine running. If he said the word, I had to run as fast as I could to the phonebox and dial 999, and they would be out to pick you out of the water. Two minutes to the call box and three minutes for the crew to drop the moorings and get to you. He thought you could last five minutes.”

“Fuck”

“Yeah, fuck.”

At a time when physical holding is not possible towards anyone other than immediate family, I wonder if we will develop the skills of emotional holding that my grandparents had in spadefuls.