Dove

by Robin Lee Graham

A loner? Was I really different? I had friends. But I liked being alone, and a boat gave me the chance of getting away from people.

blue water is not an innocent and sparkling playground but that it can destroy mercilessly.

I detested the routine of school days, the unchanging pattern from the brushing of my teeth to learning English grammar.

But he did remind me of the seafarers’ superstition never to start a voyage on a Friday.

more interested in living than longevity.”

Among the farewell gifts were a couple of kittens brought in a basket by my uncle, Dick Fisher, with whom my father and I had been staying. I named them immediately Joliette and Suzette for the two Tahitian girls who had been offered to my parents as a trade for me three years earlier. The kittens, born in a closet, became famous overnight, their pictures appearing on front pages from Mexico to London.

Dove behaved well and so did the kittens once they had gained their sea legs.

“The most important piece of Robin’s luggage is a shelf of schoolbooks.” “Like hell,” I told the cats.

Spray hit my sandwich as I was putting it into my mouth, so I didn’t need to salt it.

the clear night sky allowed me to take my first star fix. I was really excited about this and taped: It’s two o’clock in the morning and I know exactly where I am. That’s kind of fun.

He believes that the best way to learn is to get away to a quiet place—like the ocean.”

I was back in civilization and not liking it too well.

How different they are, these islands, different as flowers from flowers, trees from trees. People are too. Why do we lump people all together?

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, “but I have sometimes had a feeling of being able to see a little way ahead—as if time were a sort of path, and I could pick out my footprints before I made them.”

One learns from the sea how little one needs, not how much. These were our islands now, islands cut off from the world of concrete and steel, from freeways and television.

Extrasensory perception is not my bag. But perhaps when two people are very close they can transmit waves without material or scientific aid.

We possessed no calendar, not even a watch between us. Time was measured by the angle of the sun and by nights filled with the perfume of exotic flowers, and always the inexplicable throb beating out the rhythm and the harmony of nature.

The sun-washed, sparkling Durban that had welcomed me in October was now drab, cold, unfriendly. It was like returning to a house that had once been a well-loved home, but finding it empty, shuttered, smelling of mice and mildew. How weird, I thought, that one small girl could change the character and climate of a city.

happiness has no frontiers, that it’s a state of mind and not a possession, not a set route through life, not a goal to be gained but something that steals in gently like an evening mist or the morning sunlight—something beyond our control.