Life by the Water

Letter dated March 11, 1953

Summer is here as far as Florida is concerned. Until last month it really was quite cool. Then suddenly it turned into the most beautiful of weather…hot and sunny during the day with cool, crisp nights.

I wish you could see the children! It has been warm enough for them to run around in bathing suits less than a month, but already Alex is turning a light mahogany-color (which is quite a deep tan for that little blond burr-head); when he smiles you see bright white teeth against the tan, bright blue eyes, and that almost-shaved head of his, and he does look awfully healthy and happy. Carli gives almost the same impression. She naps during the day so hasn’t been outdoors as much, but she is a beautiful light gold color and her hair…new cut in a little Dutch bob…is bleaching whiter every day. With her blond bangs, blue eyes, and chubby little figure she really looks like the original Hollander.

 

We have been going to the beach regularly, or letting the children splash around in the bayou. They both almost go crazy the minute they get near the water. I think that as soon as we get into our routine of really swimming (it sill is a little cold for Bucher and me these days) Alex will be paddling around pretty well. The few times he has been under water this year, he came up grinning without burbling at all, so apparently he has learned to catch his breath before going under and it doesn’t worry him.

Carli adores both the water and the sand, of course. Every time she takes off for the water, she looks back over her shoulder to see who is going to stop her, and seems amazed that no one minds.

 

Our latest activity is going over to the “Fiddler crab beach,” a low sandy spot that is under water at high tide, at the side of the house just beyond our lot line. There are tens of thousands of Fiddlers there.

They are small crabs ranging from the size of a dime to the size of a quarter, roughly. They have one pincer, but it doesn’t hurt much. And they are delightful to watch since they run any direction, forward, backward, or to either side without ever turning around.

Alex, Bucher, and I catch the crabs, hand them to Carli, and she drops them in a bucket. Most of the time, she tucks them tenderly under her chin in her version of a hug before depositing them. She got nipped for the first time the other day and it deterred her only slightly. Now she won’t carry them quite as far, and if the bucket is too far away, she’ll carry them a few steps toward it, stop, look at the crab speculatively, and then drop it and chase it the rest of the way toward the bucket trying to recapture it.

 

We have been working like mad for the past couple weeks on the boat. We planned to put a fresh coat of paint on her and then take off on a cruise. Then Bucher decided that the paint was so thick on the boat we had better burn it down to bare wood with a blowtorch and start over. It sounded rather simple the way he said it, but that’s the worst job I ever have seen. In the first place, we had wind every day…nothing you would notice otherwise, but it kept blowing the blowtorch out. And you have to get into the swing of doing it just right…heating the paint, and then moving the torch slowly ahead as you peel the paint off with a putty knife. It is a mean job, standing in waist-deep water, holding that heavy torch over your head half the time, and digging off the paint. It took over a week to finish, partly because many times the wind would be so high Bucher would have to quit, and partly because he couldn’t work longer than four or five hours at it a day.

Meanwhile, I painted all the decks, did some staining and varnishing, refinished the cabin floors, and sanded the first side Bucher finished. Right now we have one coat of paint on each side, and have one side and half the other re-caulked. Now we have to re-sand her and put on one or two more coats. Also, Bucher found mahogany on the transom (back end) and we are going to varnish it instead of re-painting. That means it has to be scraped perfectly and every spec of old varnish and paint sanded off, re-caulked, stained, and varnished three or four times, with wet sanding in between coats. Really, this boat up-keep is something! But at least we are out in the sun working on it…even Alex helps…and it is fun.

 

Carli has been feeding herself some lately. She started a month ago, and while she certainly can’t be considered accurate, she is doing a reasonably good job. At this point she eats most of her breakfast alone, and part of dinner and supper. However, I usually have to help her finish these. And Alex sometimes takes over and feeds her for me. She also holds her own cup nicely, but isn’t trustworthy, since she is liable to decide to look at the underside of the bottom of it without warning.

 

Alex’s prayers are very interesting these days. When he gets through with the routine prayer he has a little chat with the Lord. Sometimes he does what he calls “the God-blessing” and sometimes he doesn’t feel like blessing anyone. New people show up each night, and some of the regulars get dropped. And furthermore, if he doesn’t feel like blessing someone, they don’t get blessed.

Then he goes on to tell the Lord whether he has been good or bad and, allegedly, to ask His help in being good the next day. The dialog goes something like this: “You know, I was pretty good today, Lord, yes I was. (much nodding of the head) I expect that with Your help I’ll be just as good tomorrow. Probably better, even.” And last night he practically convulsed me with his comment, “Yes, Lord, I’ve been pretty slow between bad things lately.”

 

From letter, probably written in late 1953

Alex makes up little rhymes all day long. Sometimes he will be chanting, in perfect rhythm, and will ask me if it rhymes. I have explained to him that it doesn’t always, but that not all poetry rhymes, and that sometimes all you need is rhythm in the words to make poetry. So he goes on and composes in “free verse.” Furthermore, I have yet to hear him make up a rhyme and make a mistake in his meter. Apparently he just “feels” the number of feet in his lines the way he “feels” mathematics. I hope the knack lasts!

 

I know you have been reading about our “Red Tide.” We haven’t been bothered back here in the bayou except for an occasional whiff of fish smell from far off. It has been bad at some other places around here, but a strong off-shore wind last week took the mass of fish further out in the Gulf, so it has been a lot better. Of course, no one is swimming, but we have had a run of cool, rainy weather, so we wouldn’t be swimming anyway.