Jackie May

If you were to venture to the zip code 04917, you might find your way to the Great Pond marina. And if, once there, you navigated a skiff through the maze of bobbing buoys and lobster boats, eventually, somewhere in the bay, you would find a boat with my name on it, a large lobster vessel that I imagine to be green (I actually don’t know what color it is) named F/V Jackie May. And if you did all this, then you would be one step closer to understanding my backstory.

The boat is something I can’t show you. I can, however, show you the other aspects of my story. I am the product of the typical midcoast Maine fisherman, one who spends weeks at a time hundreds of miles offshore and feels uncomfortable on land when he returns home for a few days. I am the product of the typical midcoast Maine fisherman, but I am anything but typical.

My father gave me only a few things: an ever burning love for the ocean and all its amenities, a complete sense of independence, and an invaluable lesson on the dangers of addiction. For the latter, he can be held only partially responsible. Like me, he grew up with a parent whose love for his addiction surpassed his love for his children. Unlike me, he grew up knowing that he would follow suit – knowing that he would become what his mother had become, what his uncles had become, what his sister had become. His disease would define him. My father, you see, fit the mold.

I do not fit the mold. Something about me is different than the rest of my predestined family members. My passion for learning – my desire for all things intellectual – is foreign to my father’s family. I listen to Bach and Mozart while I study the implications of the Seven Years’ War on Britain’s colonial future; I wake up hours before school to test precipitate formation in the reaction of magnesium sulfate with sodium carbonate; I become euphoric when I finally calculate the sum of an infinite geometric series.

I am emotionally intuitive. I feel vicarious happiness and sadness and every emotion in between through my loved ones. I cry when my mom cries, even if she is just crying because she forgot something at the grocery store. I am restless. I yearn to leave the confines of my hometown, of my state, of my country. I seek other cultures, other people, other worlds. I am devoted. I spend lonely hours on the field hockey field perfecting my chip shot, and weekends showing youth players my love of the game. I am imaginative. I can entertain almost anyone on a stage with a handful of actors. I am curious. I ask too many questions and delve into topics that, I have been told one too many times, "are beyond the scope of this class."

And all of this separates me from three generations of my family. All of this prevents me from fitting the mold. All of this is who I am. Where my father succumbed to the inevitable, I fight it relentlessly. His lack of passion drives my enthusiasm for gaining experience from every corner of life.

If you were to find the Jackie May floating somewhere in the icy waters a mere twenty minutes from my home, you would be closer to finding my father than I have been in eight years. My story is not really my story at all. Instead it is the culmination of generations of stories – generations that have fueled my fire. After all, my dad always told me that the Jackie May is where he hopes to find freedom.