10
A bucko Captain and his Bible chart for me the mysteries of sex
“Joan, when you’ve learned to take a licking without a squawk outta you, when you can lose something you’ve wanted for a long time and not be discouraged, when you can be becalmed for weeks in the doldrums without sight of the sun or a star to navigate by and not lose your faith in God Almighty because you can’t understand His wisdom in confusing you—then you can go.”
It was Father, for the dozenth time answering my question:
“Will I always have to be on a ship and never live in cities ashore?”
I am still, in my father’s eyes, his baby girl, but how he fought to keep maturity from catching up with me! He never in my life fondled me affectionately—never held me and kissed me as fathers of little girls ashore do. He was afraid of making me hungry for the tender attentions that women give, and as there was no woman on board to give those attentions, he hardened me against them. He has told me since that he often ached to crush me to him when some childish thing I did made him realize how utterly lonely I was. One day he saw Stitches stroking my dark curls lovingly, and it was only Stitches’ age that kept Father from beating him up. He sent Stitches to the fo’c’s’le on rations of bread and water for three days with the warning that if he ever got softhearted over me again he’d have to take his sea bag to some other ship! When Father showed me affection he usually did it with a good hard kick or a hearty punch on the back such as men use to express emotion to each other without detracting from their manliness.
If Father believed in the wisdom of a rope’s end on my southernmost portion to discipline me, he didn’t neglect my character building. In spite of his roughness—his bellowing voice to the sailors in a storm, his demand for obedience from his crew—he had a tender side to his nature that he showed me on rare occasions. He never trusted his own judgment in giving me advice. Every time I went to him with a question about life that puzzled my young mind he would turn to his old worn Bible and quote me a passage that satisfied my questioning.
When I confronted him with a bewildered question about the process of maturity, Father without a word, reached for his Bible. He turned its pages until he found a certain chapter in the Old Testament.
“Joan, listen to this passage. It will tell you better than I can what you should know. If only there was a woman on board, she could tell you better.”
Of course I then asked questions and he explained the meaning of the verse. In simple words Father revealed to me the mysteries of maturity. To me it was so beautiful that I pitied the sailors because they were not the chosen ones of God.