Late at night, when I wake and everyone else is asleep, our house feels like a ship in the middle of the jet-black Atlantic. My eyes open to the darkness, but it’s my ears that orient me. I listen to the silence, caressed every few seconds by the sound of my loved ones breathing. I account for each passenger–my husband next to me, and my children, sick with colds. At 1 a.m., I am the captain on duty. I close my eyes and flash a light to the other ships in the night’s vast expanse. I signal the other captains who stand sentinel. I nod to the mothers slipping silently into nurseries to feed their newborns, and wave to the fathers curled up next to their toddlers, guarding them against returning nightmares.
On these ships, as with real ones, box compartments contain essentials for the journey. Drawers hold clothes and washcloths, lotions and soap. Higher up, crowded cabinets cradle just-in-case thermometers and emergency elixirs. The ship’s whole inventory, all of its hundreds of items, hovers like a 3-D map in the captain’s mind. The back-up lovey, the fever medicine, the love letter sent from Venice. Together they comprise the physical log of a family. A family whose mystical log of love and memory is recorded in each passenger’s dreams.
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