Courage is not what you think it is

Weather Report, January 25

I look across the river at the city and all I see is grey. It looks like the old city, in photographs, which is how it looked in real life as well: black and white.

It could be 1947, the catastrophic snowfall in New York. My father worked on the Nevermind Moran, that legendary tugboat that plied New York harbor, looking for trouble. Her captain was drunk most of the time. The crew prayed for him to fall down drunk and stay that way, so the tug would be captained by my father, who was nineteen.

He wasn’t just any kind of nineteen. He had just returned from China, where he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, fighting the communists on the side of the nationalists. My father was a dead shot and often set on the night watch, staring into the black night with orders to kill anything that moved. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.

Yes, he lied about his age. People lie about a lot of things. Mostly, we lie to ourselves.

Orders came to take the tug to Connecticut. A hospital had lost power in the storm. They tied up the tugboat under the bridge and hooked up her generator to the hospital lines in the snow. It wasn’t safe. But they couldn’t let the hospital go dark.

That may have been a story from a different storm in a different year, and the tug was in Connecticut by accident. My story is from my long ago, but it may have been a story from their long ago. It may be that I heard the grownups tell that story and laugh. I hid under the table. It was all very scary when they talked about the storms and the war. I hid under the table a lot.

I stare at the snow in 2026. This storm is not as bad, but from here, the city has gone dark.

No one tells me not to be afraid. Courage is not what you may think it is.

Get home safe, New York.