Life had never treated me kindly. Nothing treats anyone kindly. Not really. It's all perception really. What we see as good is horrible for someone else like the phrase, 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' I guess.
My daughter, Ondine, says that we just have to see the treasure in everything. She says a lot, Ondine, but that's what I love about her. She's not afraid to speak her mind, even if she's back talking to me. She's not ashamed of back talking me or arguing or debating… I think she gets it from all the times she heard her mother and I howling at one another. That was before the divorce. Now we try not to speak to one another.
Ondine is my miracle. Her mother endured a rough birth to have her and she's been in and out of hospital ever since. Her kidneys are already failing and she's not even seen her eleventh birthday. We named her Ondine because it means 'little wave'. As a fisherman I thought it would be good luck but as a father I wonder if I didn't predict a future for her… one where she'll never sail smoothly.
Our little village works off the fishing trawlers. We live on the beauty of the water. Ondine loves going out with me on my boat, watching the horizon and the waves balancing themselves in a continuous relationship older than time itself. Now that she's in a wheelchair it's a little harder to bring her out but I rigged a chair for her on deck that holds her in place without restricting her view. She loves it.
Her mother doesn't.
But the day I pulled in the catch that changed my life I was alone. That might be why I believed, for a time, that maybe I was dreaming about what I found. How else do you explain the woman I pulled from the water in my net?