We don’t know when the Cruse family first came to Baltimore, but we do know they were there by the late 1700’s. Our Mother’s people were on the Eastern Shore much earlier than that, so surely, we are a family with the brackish waters of the Chesapeake in our veins. Our father, though he grew up a city boy, got his young family out on the waters of the bay in the first thing he got his hands on that would actually float.
That old bay-built (make unknown, year unknown) 33 foot cruiser, mostly floated and what Dad lacked in navigational or boat handling skills he made up for in mechanical ability and love of the water. So we set out to explore the Chesapeake.
The Chesapeake Bay is to this day a wonderful, magnificent body of water, but in the 1950’s, especially to a boatload of five wide-eyed kids, it possessed a magic and mystery equal to anything we read about in the story books. First of all, except for the waterman, it was mostly empty, the happy waves that pleasure boaters gave to each other as they infrequently crossed paths were salutes to fellow adventurers.
In those days the bleached ribs or rotting hulls of wooden sailing vessels were not an uncommon sight on bars or in the back creeks of the rivers and waterways, maybe they had just hauled oysters from Crisfield to Baltimore or maybe they were the remains of clipper ships that had made the run to China and back a dozen times, or maybe colonial gunboats or pirates ships – it did not matter, they were awesome.
And the towns along the shoreline, “unspoiled” does not do them justice, grey waterman shacks along the waterfront and fine old homes on back streets, mostly unchanged for the last century or so. We explored the towering ruins of the old bayside resorts at Tolchester and at Betterton, where the old Port Welcome, the last of the bay liners still made a port call.
If the northern Bay was a watery wonderland of mystery and history co-mingled, the southern Bay was that too plus, it was a pristine ecology of staggering abundance. The waters were clear, warm, and limpid. I remember looking over the side of the boat down into fifteen feet of water to see schools of fish amidst many yards long stands of blue-green seas grass. Out on the bay, large patches of the surface could come to a sudden boil from feeding schools of bluefish. Pushing southward was like traveling onto an organic soup: crabs were everywhere, you could scoop them right off the surface if you were handy with a net.
In short, it was heaven, a paradise. And it is to that paradise, so I know in my heart, that our brother Don has now returned. Now as then he is safe under the watchful eyes of Father and Mother, knowing again the perfect peace that only a loved and loving child knows, surrounded by beauty. It is right.
He is cruising on those clear waters. His boat, a craft of elegant lines made of wood shaped by his own hands and skills bears some aspect from every boat he ever loved and there were many. He has set out on a new voyage of discovery on the Chesapeake that has no end. Fair winds and following seas, my brother.
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We cannot say we know a story until we have read to the very end. Sometimes, if it is a really good story, we don’t want it to end. But all stories do and eventually we must put the book down and walk away. Sometimes we feel such grief that the story is over, we must busy ourselves with other matters for a while – until time dulls the sense of loss. But sooner or later we come back to consider it from beginning to end, see it as a whole for the first time, and make use of the opportunity to truly understand it for the first time.
The book of Donald Ridgley Cruse is closed. What can we understand from the story, how do we assess his life? To begin, this story is way too short, tragically short. Where are the additional chapters we were expecting, that we were looking forward too, that he deserved, that we deserved? The Author does not have a website where we can leave comments expressing our ire and disappointment and, in any case, we have to admit that a short story is not necessarily a bad story.
A life, like a book, is to be appreciated within its own context. There is little value in comparing a book with other books, not even the book it might have been if the author had written it differently.
Today, Don is free to set his course to any point of the compass he likes, to cross a bay, an ocean or the sea of stars if he so chooses. But on this earth the voyage of life is on a river whose swift current carries us all inexorably downstream. It braches endlessly and the business of life is to learn how to navigate it, because some branches pass through places of beauty and abundance if we can find them, but others through barren deserts or dark scary forests, and there are inevitable rocks and rapids.
So it matters very much which way we steer the boat that carries our soul. Sometimes the cataracts come upon us before we have the skill and wisdom to escape them and it may happen that our life is thrust upon a course that, in retrospect, we would rather not have taken.
Ironically Don, who became the consummate boat handler and navigator, did not give himself high marks when it came to steering through the courses of his own life. The mistakes of his younger days weighed heavily upon him and he judged himself harshly in comparison to others.
Why compare yourself with others, who knows whether they are truly better navigators or whether they chanced upon calm waters at critical junctures in life where you found a maelstrom? When the story is done there can only be one measure that gives the journey its true significance. It is not its length, not where it ends, not in the preponderance of light happy places or dark sad shores that were encountered. The genuine meaning can be found only in one place: in the quality of heart of the voyager.
The quality of a heart. Does it finch from causing harm? Can it ache with loneness, glow bright with happiness, become heavy with grief? Can it experience beauty, can it love? Is it an open heart? Or is it closed, locked and armored against life, capable of neither bright light nor deep dark but only a medium grey? The good stories are all stories of the heart.
From the beginning of his life, I know, I was there, there was something special about Don’s heart; a kind of loving sweetness that melted the hearts of everyone he encountered. You could not stay angry with him no matter naughty or downright bad his behavior. Such a heart is a beautiful rare thing though it is not an unmixed blessing.
His heart was capable of anger and even bitterness but I never saw a trace of malice in it, not to any living thing. To give it a single word, his heart was soft, never hard. Perhaps he would have been better off with a bit more iron, been better able to resist temptations, to steer clear of some of those rapids, but it was not in him. But he loved, he loved the woman in his life, his parents, his brothers and sisters, his nieces and nephews, his many friends, and especially his children, though I know there were times he hardly felt worthy of their love in return. And that is sad because he was a much loved man.
And after turbulent years, it seems that special sweetness of heart did guide him into calm waters. He found his redemption in the experience of simple, beautiful things. The shaping of raw wood into an elegant curve to be fitted into hull of a classic boat, the colors of sunset on the river, the lapping of water against the hull as he laid down to rest, his dog beside him.
No more, will we see the green-hulled boat at sunset on the North East river as he makes his evening rounds. No more, experience the infectious laugh and the grin that went with it, sometimes mischievous but mostly of pure delight, no more, look into the brown eyes that were so quick to become misty with emotion.
But he is not really gone from us, not from those of us whose stories intertwined with his, whose lives were enriched by his. When we cast off lines to enjoy a day on the river, when we see morning mist floating over warm waters, when the sun comes out from behind the clouds and silver and gold sparkle on the surface of the bay, these words will come to us: “Don would have loved this.” And then we will feel his presence, enjoying the moment with us, adding his enthusiasm to our own, enriching us still.
Don voyages on, now freed from the bounds of this earthy river, but this I know. He remains with us too, living on in our hearts, adding a measure of the quality of his heart to ours.
The quality of his heart. Don had the open heart of a child and throughout all the twists and turns, all the rocks and rapids of his remarkable life, he never lost it. And that, is a very good story. I am so grateful for it.
