Elizabeth Learns Lessons Of Life With Her Dad, While Sailing

Hi, I’m Rick Barron, your host, and welcome to That’s Life, I Swear

As I publish my podcasts, I’m constantly wanting to find people to share with you who have shown courage, learning lessons in life they never thought would help them later or dealing with moving forward after tackling a personal hurdle in their life. That said, this episode comes from an article I recently read in the Wall Street Journal. I want to give credit to the author of this article. Her name is Elizabeth Bernstein, who writes for the Journal. I was immediately taken by Elizabeth’s article for many reasons which I’ll get into. What drew my attention was her loving relationship with her father and lessons she learned from him about life while learning how to sail.  I like to share her story with you.

Let’s jump into this. 

Elizabeth begins her story by remembering the day her dad asked if she would do him a favor. The favor was to take care of his prize possession, his 34-foot Hunter boat, for a couple of weeks.

Courtesy of: Wikipedia

It was a boat they had sailed together for many years. The boats name was the Ivory Gull. Nice nautical name. Elizabeth and her sisters learned a lot on that boat besides sailing.

She replied to her dad that it was no problem, and was happy to do it.

A few days later, her dad went to the hospital for hip surgery. Elizabeth’s dad’s profession was an orthopedic surgeon by the way.

On the night of the operation an unexpected twist of events took place that threw a curve ball at the family. While Elizabeth was by her dad’s bedside, he suddenly suffered a massive stroke. It wasn’t enough that the stroke happened, but that the stroke, left Elizabeth’s dad with Aphasia. 

Aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. The cause is always due to injury to the brain, most commonly from a stroke, more so in older individuals.

You may have heard of heard of this medical term before. In March of 2022 after forty years in the acting business, Bruce Willis was ending her career, due to a recent Aphasia diagnosis, which put a spotlight on the somewhat rare disorder.

Sadly, with Elizabeth’s dad’s complications resulting from his stroke, her having any future conversations with him, were about to come to a grinding halt.

At that moment in her life, she felt a sinking feeling of hopelessness, but at the same time she needed to take the bull by the horns and focus on her dad’s request, and that was to take care of the Ivory Gull, which now took on a more significant purpose.

For Elizabeth, her dad’s boat wasn’t just a boat. She saw it in many ways. It was, over time, where she learned lessons of life that would help guide her in her career. It represented everything her dad coached on such as learning to be independent, dealing with unexpected fire drills not only on a boat but in life as well.

Seeing her dad fall into this mental state, came like a Tsunami wave. She needed to brass it out and take on a role to care for her dad’s boat. For Elizabeth, taking care of the boat was taking care of her dad.

Elizabeth’s dad taught her to sail when she was just eight years old, in a catboat on the Indiana Lake, much like he’d learned to sail as a child himself. Her dad provided the fatherly guidance on learning how to sail, such as by placing his hand over hers on the tiller. Elizabeth reflects on those days on the sail boat, as fulfilling and the most treasured moments in her life.

Courtesy of: Boatinggeeks

Elizabeth’s family spent many a weekend during the hot summers, sailing. They would sail around Chicago and have many family vacations going up and down Lake Michigan. Some of the harbors they stopped by are tongue twisters to pronounce but I’ll take a stab: Manitowoc Saugatuck, and Charlevoix. See if you can say those names fast three time or better yet, after a couple of beers, I dare you.

Elizabeth’s dad instilled in his daughter’s lessons of how to be independent. He had many teaching methods, but one of his favorites was the impromptu fire drills. What did those fire drills encompass? You name it, but a few included the loss of a rudder drill. Steering a boat by sails alone. He went so far as doing a man-overboard fire drill with him being the one to make the jump overboard! 

With the fire drills, Elizabeth and her sisters learned well, and yes, they always got her dad back on board.

Without Elizabeth and her sisters realizing it, all of the drills, the testing of their resolve, was her dad’s way in prepping them for life, and the challenges they would face along the way.

At times, Elizabeth’s dad would test the waters, so to speak, by pushing the limit. One day he instructed her to climb up a 50-foot mast in a bosun’s chair to change a light bulb. What is a bosun’s chair? Trust me, it’s not much. It’s a seat consisting of a board and a rope; used while working aloft or over the side of a ship, that’s it. 

Courtesy of: West Marine

Evidently, all of the fire drills and training her dad put her through, gave her the confidence to not be afraid of anything. When she completed the changing of the light bulb, her dad hoisted her down to the deck. He could see her legs were shaking. After planting her feet on deck, he couldn’t help but notice the glow of accomplishment on her face that said, ’I did it dad’, and proud she made him. 

He looked at her with the pride only a father could feel, and said, “Lizzie, you just demonstrated Hemingway’s definition of courage: Grace under pressure.”

Elizabeth recalls a moment where she and her sisters heard her dad shouting “All hands-on deck!” They were planning to sail across Lake Michigan that day. When they reached the deck, they soon discovered that the winds were extremely strong and big waves were the forecast for the day. 

Anyone in their right mind would’ve waited for calmer waters, but not Elizabeth’s dad. Perhaps this was another lesson in life he wanted to teach them. That is, one cannot always wait until everything is hunky dory. There are those moments when you must trust your instincts and just do it. Life waits for no one.

Elizabeth tried to reason with her dad that it was too rough to make the trip. Her dad looked at her and her sisters, and with his arm around Elizabeth he said with conviction, that he trusted his crew [the girls] and his boat. He explained that one should ‘never’ allow themselves to get boxed in.

They made the trip in one piece. She remembers after they completed the trip, her dad’s laugh. It was a laughter of success and pride in his girls.

As time moved on, Elizabeth continued other sailing ventures such as to the Florida Keys, where her parents moved to. She loved the moments with her dad where they had long conversations regarding sailing, of course, books, and life itself. 

As promised, Elizabeth made sure she took care of her dad’s boat. There were moments when she ran into problems trying to understand the maintenance required for various sections of the vessel and when. One incident was when she needed to turn on the engine, at which point, the boat started to vibrate in a violent manner. She lost her composure at that instant but soon knew there was a possible solution to what was happening. Elizabeth’s dad had taught her to know there is always a solution to a problem. Don’t panic.

Elizabeth looked around the boat and found what she hoped would provide the answer to the engine acting in the manner that it did. The answer was her dad’s maintenance log book. As she flipped the pages of the old log book, she was impressed with the copious notes her dad had written for every repair he had performed. Somehow, she had a sense her dad knew, she would find a way to solve the problem. After all, he taught her many lessons about life, not to mention sailing.

Courtesy of: WSJ

Elizabeth felt her dad had left her a little short on the what were key items to cover with regards to the maintenance of the boat. In additional to the log book she found, she later discovered a short list of ‘to dos’ in terms of caring for the boat. Such items as run the engine for 20 minutes. Check the bilge for water. Make sure all batteries are off when you leave.

Knowing her dad would not be around much longer, the one thing she couldn’t and wouldn’t let him down on, was the care of the Ivory Gull, and she never did.

Sadly, Elizabeth’s dad’s life journey came to an end in January of 2022. What made the loss harder was he died while holding her hand. She thought of the various moments she spent with her dad on the boat. How he taught her the fine art of being a good sailor, holding her hand has he did while helping her steer the boat with the tiller, and how to be ready for life’s curve balls.

So, what’s the take away here? What can we learn from this story about Elizabeth, her dad, and the Ivory Gull?

When you lose someone, you care about, it can be numbing. The vacuum you feel from losing someone is normal. I know the feeling having been there twice with the loss of my parents. For some you go into a stage of depression, denial, or just accept that it was their time to go.

For Elizabeth, losing her dad was I’m sure a wave of difficult emotions from emptiness to regret. On the evening she said her final good-bye to her dad, she went to his house and went to his bedroom closet. As she rambled through some of his positions, she found an item that was dear to her dad, his captain’s hat. The inscription on the hat said “Captain, Ivory Gull”. It was his prize possession.

Looking at the hat, she remembered taking it to him after he had his stroke, while in the ICU. He wore that hat every day, as he fought and learned how to walk, swallow, communicate and survive. 

Her dad gave her a compass of life, via the lessons he had taught her when sailing. It was the compass of lessons he taught her, that would help guide her into life’s many roads she had crossed and would cross in the future. Elizabeth was steadfast. You see, her dad left her something else to always hold onto, his heart, which was the Ivory Gull.

Elizabeth dad’s presence was everywhere on that boat. The sails, the tiller, the bow, everything that told her, this was dad’s home and now it’s hers to care for.

The next day, she took the Ivory Gull out for a sail, along with her dad’s memory. Ironically, that day was Father’s Day.

Courtesy of: WSJ

One day, someone will ask how her dad died. I’m sure her reply will be, I would rather tell you how he lived.

Well, there you go. That’s life, I swear.

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website that you can find on either Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, for show notes calling out key pieces of content mentioned, and the episode transcript.

As always, I thank you for listening. 

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