The Ocean Prince (Completed)

Chapter One

Once upon a time and not a very long time ago because I was a, child of eight, something not so wonderful happened.  In fact, it was a horrible tragedy for me and my family.  I lost my mother at sea.  She was an adventurer of sorts and she worked for the National Geographic magazine.  She was a photographer and she particularly took pictures of the things that are found in the sea. 

That's how she met my father, Edgardo Ortiz who was a fisherman here in Carolina, Puerto Rico.  My father was a noble, decent man.  He wasn't rich, but he wasn't very poor either.  We lived in a modest home and although I never got all of the extravagant dollhouses I asked for Christmas I had a few dolls and a house made of wood built by my father's hands.  

Before my father was a fisherman, he took a few courses in woodcraft at school and so he liked building things for me.  Sometimes the objects he produced came out a little crooked or not in a completely perfect state, but, it was okay, and besides my things were very original.  So, whenever a kid at school talked about his new toy and tried to bully me for not having something as cool as he did or she did, I would shake my shoulders and defend myself with creative flair.

"You're so poor, your dad has to build stuff for you with old crap," I remember a girl at school saying.

"You are so unoriginal.  Plus, you also lack education, it's called recycling and we're cool because we're saving the Earth and you're adding garbage to it," I'd say and the teacher would cheer me.  So, yeah, I was kind of smarty pants, in my own way.  My father had taught me to defend myself always from bullies, so, it was something that had been ingrained in me.  

However, that night, when I was informed of the tragedy, I had nothing witty to say.  There were no words, only a stream of tears expressed what I felt, shouts, and many many nights of crying.  She was on a boat in the middle of the sea with her swimming gear, snorkeling masks, tanks, and the camera that could take pictures underwater.  She supposedly didn't tie herself well to the boat, so after she took her pictures and tried to swim back she lost herself in the sea.  Her oxygen tank had eventually run out of oxygen and she couldn't find her way back up and drowned.  The boat was found floating unscathed with her clothes, emergency gear, and her cell phone.  That's how they knew it was hers.  

A search was done for her, but we already knew that she was dead and that it was only the corpse that they were searching for and two days later, they found it.  Some of her organs were donated to other people because she had signed up to be an organ donor to save other people's lives.  Eventually, what was left of her body was incinerated because my mother had said in life that when she died, she didn't want a funeral.  She had insisted on wanting to be cremated.  So my father granted her, her wish.  

Despite the incident, my father didn't stop being a fisherman because it was the only thing that he knew how to be.  I never really healed from that, I don't think anyone ever does.  It was the greatest loss of my life and at that age, I ended up in therapy although the therapy didn't help me completely.  

I went through a process of sadness, anger, and hate and then a supposed acceptance.  I carried my mother's picture everywhere I went.  She may have died, but I believed that as long as I held on to her memory she would always be with me.  Life was different and more difficult without her.  I had no bullies after the incident and even if I did, I doubted it would have made a difference.  Nothing in the world could break me like the loss of my mother.  Absolutely nothing.

Eventually, like all children did, I grew up too.  I became a rebel.  I smoked even though my father warned me not to, I went to parties because my father wasn't around anyway since he had to work at sea and although I didn't have s*x yet, I was planning to with my boyfriend, I did make out a lot.

Whenever I could try something dangerous I would.  I cut class.  I went to the beach or the mall.  I even shoplifted once, but the experience was too scary for me to repeat it.  The point is, that I wasn't really afraid of anything.  My mother's death had numbed me to a certain point where it got me to think that if something ever did happen to me, I'd be alright because I would see my mother again.

So, a week before my eighteenth birthday I told my dad that I wanted to be an adventurer like my mother and that I was considering journaling though and not photography because I did feel like after long years of journaling for therapeutic reasons I had actually made a good job writing about a bunch of crap in my life, so I figured, it was the closest thing I could do that resembled what my mother used to do when she was alive.  Just as doing dangerous things, being an adventurer was just one step close to her.

"Dad, I want a boat," I said.  He gazed at me with a sharp glare before he replied.

"You don't need a boat to be a journalist.  You just need a laptop.  I'll get you that," he said.  I shook my head.

"Dad, you don't understand.  I can't be a journalist if I haven't gone through any adventures," I replied to which he answered almost immediately.

"You can have other adventures that don't include the sea."

"Dad?  Please... Come on, you're a fisherman," I whined.

"I don't have a choice in the matter.  You needed a home, food, and clothes on you and I did the job.  The answer is no," he said.

"Okay, but what if I go to a cruise then?  With my friends?" I asked, but he was adamant about it.

"I said no," he said.  He walked out of the house to probably go drink a beer in some joint or something because he was on his day off.  I shook my head.

"Damn... I guess I'm just going to have to get it on my own." I said to myself.

The End of Chapter One