Welcome Home

Today, Doodle and I went to the Welcome Home Celebration for our local deep water fishing fleet. Each year the boats head out in the spring and most return in the fall. Every year the fishing community ( and hangers one...) get together for a big party to welcome back the returning boats and to give thanks to the great sea gods for their safe return. Every year it makes me cry. It's one of my favourite local festivals, it's free, has great kids activities, amazing music, the best salmon bbq south of the Bering Sea and it means something. It happens at Fisherman's Terminal in front of the memorial to those lost at sea. With the dirty, grimy well worn boats bobbing in the water. These are not huge commercial fishers, these are local, mostly single owner boats that spend months and months in the freezing waters of the Bering Sea and beyond. It's a very dangerous and occasionally lucrative job. We are not a part of the fishing industry here ( well, we eat our fair share of line caught salmon and have spent more than one morning a year waiting for a specific boat to come back so we can buy a whole fish right from the hold...) so I guess we are in a way. My Dad was a professional Sailor and he died in the water, so I have always felt like I knew a little bit about what the families of these men and women go through. The Fisherman's Memorial has always been about my Dad for me, much more than the grave where he is buried. Every year something else get me and the tears start. This year it was a group of Coast Guards men singing a hymn to the sea. There was a little girl in a princess dress dancing in circles and tossing flowers into the water. Was she remembering someone, or was she lost in a princess-y dream. Who knows, but it made me cry.

Doodle spent the day dragging his wooden boat up and down the docks, searching for puddles. He made friends with some fishermen at lunch and before long they were making obstacles for the boat and creating deeper water in the puddles. The boy knows how to make friends.

We ended the day listening to our friends Oran Nan Car sing in the fading light and the growing wind. It was a perfect lovely day, just me and Doodle and in a way, my Dad too.

So, to the Lady Lynn Ann, the Sea Star, the Heidi, the Dierdre, the Stephany A, the Jean C, the North Star, the Bering Queen, the Alsek, the Roberta K, the Lady Dee and all the others who came back. Welcome Home. We're glad your home!