When I was young: The Boat

The boat lived at the side of our house when I was young.

I don’t know where The Boat came from, just that it was always there.

When I say boat, I don’t mean a sailboat, I don’t mean motorboat. I mean some kind of wooden rowboat.

The Boat lived on its trailer at the side of our house. We were not at a boating family. I don’t recall anyone ever talking about wanting to go out on the sea, or the river, or even a creek. My grandparents were boating and fishing people. There are lots of photos of my nanna and grandfather on boats, by the sea, holding onto fish that they’ve caught.

But in my family? No, it wasn’t a thing.

The Boat was so uninteresting that even when I had friends over to play, we never played in The Boat. You would think The Boat would be great for playing on and in. It could be used as a pirate ship, or some kind of an adventure vessel to sail the seas and visit new lands.

But we never played in the boat.

I only remember being in The Boat a couple of times and it wasn’t a nice place to be. There was always water at the bottom of it. I guess every time it rained The Boat filled up with water (although it must have had a drain hole because otherwise it would be full of water and rotting). There were usually spiders in there as well, which made it an even less appealing as a place to be or play.

The Boat lived beside our house for years and years and it never moved.

When I learnt to ride a bicycle at the age of nine, I would practice by cycling round and round the house, and the narrow gap between The Boat and the garden bed was my slowest point and nemesis. I would try to get faster and faster in my loops of the house, but after cycling across the front lawn of the house, I had to make the sharp turn to the Boat side and I couldn’t do anything but slow down to get through that narrow gap between The Boat and the garden. To continue at speed would mean scratching myself on the boat, or tapping The Boat, losing balance, and toppling into the garden bed.

When I was 13, we moved house and The Boat didn’t come with us. I remember being very sulky about moving house. I was a teenager after all. I had enough change going on. I didn’t need more.

We moved to a house just three streets away, which seemed pretty pointless to this grumpy teenager. But The Boat didn’t move with us.

I have no recollection of what happened to the boat. As a teenager who had no interest in boats (like the rest of my family), I wouldn’t have paid attention when it left. But where did it go? Did it get sold? Did it get scrapped? Did they take it to the dump?

It was some years later. I mentioned something to my husband about The Boat, but he said “What boat? You’ve never talked about a boat before.”

I decided to ask my family about The Boat. As the youngest in my family by 10 years, a lot of family history had already happened before I arrived. I assumed they would remember more about The Boat’s provenance.

Everyone agrees they remember The Boat. No one remembers ever going out in The Boat. No one remembers what happened to The Boat.

Someone thinks maybe my uncle persuaded my dad to buy a boat. My uncle was not a particularly boaty person either, although he was very mechanically minded. But The Boat didn’t have a motor. It was just a heavy wooden rowing boat so probably the least exciting of any kind of boat to have.

A few years ago, visiting with my family, I said something about The Boat.

“Oh for heaven’s sake don’t mention The Boat,” said one sister, getting agitated.

“The Boat, The Boat, The Boat,” exclaimed my other sister. “Oh my God, how many discussions did we have about that bloody Boat?”

I understood that what I thought was a simple question had caused some degree of consternation in the family.

I realise now The Boat is part of our family mythology. It’s one of those things you took for granted as normal, but on reflection, looking back as an adult, you realise it wasn’t.

It was normal that we had a Boat we never used parked in our yard for years.

The boat will forever remain a mystery; where it came from, what happened to it, and why my usually very-cautious-with-his-money father bought boat that he never used.