Houseboat Horror

Grandma Stewart had a flare for the dramatic. It most likely began as a coping mechanism to mentally escape a house full of kids upstairs and hungry diners in the family restaurant downstairs. Eventually her children (and her husband) left the upstairs and the restaurant closed its doors downstairs. Left alone, Grandma’s flare grew into a quirk and eventually developed into a full-blown case of reality separation. But in the early days, when it was still a flare, she would use its power to keep youngsters in line.

Grandma and Grandpa’s houseboat was legendary in Quincy, Ohio. Grandpa built a wooden cabin with a flat roof that served as a sun deck and placed it atop a metal barge he had welders make from scrap metal. (He also built the restaurant, an airplane, an airport, and countless other projects that were enjoyed by multiple generations of Quincy residents.) Sometime in the late 1950s he successfully launched his floating masterpiece onto the Great Miami River just above the Quincy dam. Painted a bright white with blue and red trim, it festively bobbed for the next 40 years before being permanently dry-docked on the river’s banks. Most Quincyite memories include at least one summer ride on the houseboat.

Grandchildren had the privilege of unlimited access to the houseboat. We would climb its ladders to battle pirates on the sundeck or host elegant teas for the queen in the kitchenette. And on very special occasions, such as birthdays, summer holidays, and lunar eclipses, we would sleep on the houseboat.

The special occasion escapes my remembering of the sleepover that featured Grandma’s dramatic flair. Grandma tucked us into our bunk beds for the night, and, as a special treat, she loosened the pier rope so we could rock to sleep with the current in the middle of the river and still be securely tethered to the dock. In hindsight, it may have also been a way to thwart any escape efforts.

If Grandpa’s talent was crafting grown-up toys for boys, Grandma’s talent was crafting tales. She could effortlessly stir a spoonful of fiction into a bowl of reality until a story was perfectly blended. And then she would spice it up with a personal anecdote that left our young brains believing everything exciting in the world happened within walking distance of Quincy. For our sleepover, she treated us to her version of Lizzie Bordon as told with Grandma flair.

“How about a bedtime story?” she asked, not really caring if we answered. “There once was a girl who decided she didn’t like her parents. So she killed them. But she didn’t just kill them. Nope. She killed them with an axe. According to the newspaper, she hit them with the axe over and over again until you couldn’t even recognize them.” She then went into her own melodic rendition of Lizzie Bordon had an axe. She gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.

Now there was only one newspaper that my grandma read and that was the Bellefontaine Examiner, a local newspaper that served all the small towns in the county. Since Grandma was selectively omitting certain facts - like the Bordon family lived five states away 100 years ago - it was a short leap for my young brain to surmise that Grandma read about some local girl axing her parents last weekend. And that summation was happening even before she added Grandma flair. 

"They never found Lizzie. She disappeared. Some people think that she got on a raft and started floating down the river." Grandma sighed and settled into her mattress. Her breathing grew heavy and she let loose a couple of guttural snorts, preluding the eight hours of snoring that lay ahead. In a soft, dreamy voice before drifting off to sleep, she added, "Did you kids know that all waterways in this part of the country are connected? Yep, Lizzie could be floating by right now." And then she snored herself into a deep contented sleep.

Child Abandonment

I eavesdropped on the following conversation in a local coffee shop:

My mom sang in the choir and Dad was a last-pew, recovering Baptist. His job was to keep me quiet for the entire service. I was a little tyke and one Sunday I fell asleep under the pew. Momma and Daddy were half-way home before they realized I wasn’t in the car, so they turned around and came back for me. I was still sound asleep under the pew. Momma wanted to wake me, but Daddy said “Nah, just let him sleep.”

There’s a shade of narcissism in me that makes me want to drop my cloak of invisibility when I am eavesdropping and share my own tales with complete strangers. My introverted inner nemesis quickly puts the kibosh on that idea and that is why I blog my narcissistic ponderings instead. Isn’t that why blogs were created?

I, too, have left a child behind. She’s recovered beautifully and rarely has episodes of abandonment paranoia, but the nugget of guilt still scars my otherwise flawless mothering career. If she were more of a conniving personality, she could easily use the incident for material gain – designer clothing, a new car, perhaps a pink pony. Fortunately for me, her sister was also there, so I can push some of the blame onto her and emotionally damage both of them. It’s parenting BOGO.

It was a late night volleyball practice. Brittany was playing, I was coaching, and 3-year old Jessica was fighting cockroaches for Friday night’s spilled popcorn and Milk Duds under the bleachers. After putting the equipment away, flipping off the lights and double checking that all the doors were locked, Brittany and I were a couple miles down the road before she said “Wasn’t Jessica with us?” My initial reaction was “No. I don’t think so” immediately followed by fist to the gut panic.

With squealing tires, I General Lee'd my Astro minivan on a narrow country road and floored it back to the school. With the two front wheels planted on the memorial brick path that leads to the gym entrance, I barely had the vehicle in park before Brittany and I flew out of the van and ran to the glass doors, banging and screaming at the top of our lungs, praying someone was on late night duty. After an eternal two-minutes, a very confused maintenance man came to the door.

“What you want?” he shouted through the glass.

“I forgot my daughter. I left her in the gym.”

It was obvious he was contemplating which authorities to call. If I were lying, he should call the cops and a paddy wagon. If I were telling the truth, he should call the cops and children’s services. Either way, he probably should have called the cops. But he didn’t. Instead, he disengaged the alarm, flipped through his thirty-seven keys and, finally, mercifully, opened the door. I pushed past him and rushed into the dark gym.

Sitting contentedly in the center of the painted Indian mascot on the gym floor lit only by the red glow of the exit signs was Jessica, cheerfully singing television commercial jingles. Brittany and I gathered her up, showering her with kisses and apologies. “It’s ok, Mommy. I knew you would come back.”

From the doorway, the maintenance man coughed and chuckled “Five more minutes and I wouldn’t’ve been here.” He shook his head. “Yep. Would’ve locked up and she woulda been sitting there all night.”

I often share this story at social gatherings that specialize in awkward silences and those little cocktail weenies soaked in barbecue sauce and each time I share it, someone will chime in with their lost, forgotten, or abandoned child story. Once we have bared our souls, we’ll smile knowingly at each other, for we are part of a very exclusive level of bad parenting.