Choices ....

A long time ago in San Francisco, I worked with a man who was born in Indonesia and went to sea at an early age. He worked his way up from able bodied seaman to the next higher position and then the next. Finally, through hard work, education and eons sailing into the kind of ports Joseph Conrad wrote about, he reached a point where his next berth would have been ship’s master, or captain.

At that point, he met a woman ashore, fell in love, and married. Not long thereafter, his sweetheart informed him that he could have her or the sea, but not both. He chose, and when I knew him, he worked as a draftsman in a building in the Mission District of “The City.” I occupied the desk next to his.

When a ship would sound its mournful horn as it steamed through the bay toward the Golden Gate, he would stop his work and stare out the window toward the sound. Then we would all, for the briefest second, smell the salt air, feel the sting of spray against our faces, and feel the deck roll under our feet, sensing in our beings the chance of a sudden squall, rogue wave, or some other vagary of the vast ocean. Sometimes, on a morning like this, I still do.