Rebecca Stirling - The Shell and the Octopus

a memoir

REBECCA STIRLING

SHE WRITES PRESS

Copyright 2022, Rebecca Stirling

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-323-0

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-322-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022900128

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

Interior photos are from authors personal archives.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

I would like to dedicate this book to my family, blood and extended. Thanks to my dad, for his zest for life and for giving me a beautiful adventure. Thanks to my mom, for her grace and support through it all. Thank you to all who have journeyed by my side and shared your experiences in this life with me. Specifically to my dear friend Katie Lawlor, for reading this, supporting me, and giving me invaluable advice. In Montana, thank you to Angela Marie Patnode, who taught me to dive deep, and to Molly Caro May, who helped me play with and evolve my story. In Kauai, thank you to Preeta Carlson, for introducing me to the importance of healing voice, and to Bettina Maurinjian, who guided me, as she has guided so many, through empowering voice. Thank you to Robin Gadient, for the magically held space of her writing workshops and her spirit. Thank you to all who share their stories and support those who need to. And a special thank-you to She Writes Press and Ingram Publisher Services for giving me the opportunity to share our story.

Becky on Cattle Creek, Manilla 1972

My eyes flutter open to the blackness inside the boat where I can hear only the waves rushing against her hull. I lift my head to see the orb of the hanging flashlight as it swirls in figure eights over the chart table. The light circles over the teak wood planks of the companionway floor and the teak table where Dad has placed my cup of tea in its wooden holder, and I know it is time to go above decks. I use arms to lift my body off of my bunk because the boats hull is at an impossible angle for standing, but my bare feet still gain purchase. Wet weather gear feels hot and sticky on my skin as I dress and go out into the fresh, salty night air. This is routine in my half sleep: Brace legs against cockpit and feel blindly into darkness to hook my harness into the lifelines; find the tiller in my hands and see in the compass glow our heading, now 280 degrees NW; and feel for her, the Cattle Creek, to give me her direction.

Cattle Creek. It is a funny name for a boat. Dad built two houses in Cattle Creek, Colorado, in the valley named for the creek that comes down from the ranch lands on the plateaus above. He sold those houses, his first in Colorado, and used the proceeds to build our boat.

The silence between Dad and me on this little boat has deepened over the last few days. Day twenty or twenty-one on the open ocean it must be, as the moon will half fill with light for us again soon. Our throats are dry from disuse, our eyes soft with deepened understandingfor each other, this boat, the seabut mostly with gratitude.

I wedge myself in our little boats cockpit to ride the pressure of the ocean. In the first moments of the black, new-moon night, Cattle Creek and I communicate most clearly. She shudders until I pull the tiller to align her keel in balance with the movement of the ocean, in balance with the force of countering wind in her sails. I can feel her vibrations. And she is listening to me. I must be singing loudly into the wind as we fly wild over the ocean, though I cannot hear myself. No one can, except the ocean. As the boat trails iridescent streaks of plankton in the sea behind us, the tell-tale ribbons from the sails stream in the wind.

Steering the boat is a dance of push and pull with the waves quartering from behind. I dare not look; they would be monstrous giants. I pray as they lift us, but only look ahead. And I listen to Cattle Creek, her tenuous lullaby as she shifts with groans, howls, or silence in our sails. If we sail the way we are now, my heart beats calm, even when the black flow of seawater dumps wet down my back and carries my cushion away. The cushion that in calm holds to rest the sinewed muscles twitching in my back.

The sea licks us. Playing. Rough. And the boat tells me now to pull. She tells me to give way, to listen as the wind whistles through her stays. An angel chorus when I do it how she guides. A shrill scream and violent shudder when we are not in tune.

We fly wild over the ocean and surf down the waves in blackness, blind on a roller coaster with no track. Then Cattle Creek instinctively noses back into the horizon. My eyes adjust and distinguish sky through grey clouds, which rip open this night with streaks of jagged lightning. The boat shows me with her bowsprit a star to guide us. Glinting like a wink from the heavens, from the sea, an encouragement from all of the nature around me. A wink from my dad and his trust in me as he sleeps through his shift below.

The night of the phone call, my youngest sister Jeannette and I sit on the wooden floor of Moms sunroom and scrub the scales from my feet with stones and files. We have a metal bowl filled with warm, foamy water, and Jeannette insists that my feet soak in it. I am visiting Mom in Pennsylvania, here to say goodbye, though I do not yet realize the significance of this farewell. Farewell to Mom, like she said to Dad and the boatand mewhen I was ten, but also to Dad and to love, and to everything I have ever known.

I do not belong here. I do not know where I belong. Sometimes I feel as though it is nowhere. But then something reminds me: I am from everywhere. From the ocean and the boat but also, at this moment, from where Mom has moved, close to her roots in a house with a lawn and fence and big oak trees. This place is where my middle sisters, Emily and Sadie, are embarrassed by my feet. And by the way I dress and act. The callouses on my feet are thick, I agreefrom so much time with no need for shoes. I am feeling like a mermaid out of water, parched yet still glistening, this particular evening when the priest calls.