The fishing cabin our father had when we were kids was rudimentary to be sure, more of a shack than a proper dwelling. One dot in a sprawling bay alongside the Gulf of Mexico, it had no plumbing or power, save for limited DC (car battery) current he’d rigged up. It was mostly a getaway for him, but sometimes he’d bring my sister and me along for a day or two.
The summer I turned 13, he left us with our grandmother for a few days while he fished at the cabin. One morning he traversed the bay to a campground and called us from a payphone. That’s when he learned that I’d been struggling with an asthma flareup for a couple of days. When I told him how sick I was, he said the fishing had been lousy anyway, and that he’d pack up and come get us that day.
About 200 miles and a few hours later he arrived, as promised, and took us home.
I don’t miss the recurring threat of hurricanes that came with life in a coastal county. Understand, though, that hurricanes aren’t the only threat, as a tropical storm is also nothing to be trifled with. The next classification below that is a tropical depression, one of which hit the bays and swept the cabin away while we three slept safely inland at the house.
The cabin was simply gone. No trace. No pilings, no anything.
Dad realized that had he not come to take us home, he’d have been in that cabin, likely in the water trying to save his flat-bottom boat. That day could have gone at least a couple of wildly different directions, one of them likely ending in tragedy. The outcome was determined by chance. Happenstance. Depending on the outcome, this event could have been looked back upon as tragic instead of fortunate.
During our mental debriefings, we estranged parents may be tempted to conclude that our current circumstances are a product of the cruel whims of fate, against which we were, and are, powerless. It is one thing to come to the realization that there is liberation to be found in understanding what we cannot control; it is another thing altogether to frame chance occurrences as evidence for a pessimistic worldview.
