Salvaged

Shipwrecks defined my father’s career; his long absences to remote salvage jobs shaped my childhood and, ultimately, our relationship. Now in my 50s, I dig through the records of my father’s work in the South China Sea, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Cape Cod, and San Francisco Bay, to better understand his work and forge a closer bond with him. In the process, I find surprising insights into my relationship with Owen, my teenage son struggling with ADHD. Offering an unflinching account of my role as a daughter, wife, and mother, I expose my blind spots and share my hard-won insights. Salvaged shows the journey to intergenerational love, understanding, and acceptance through the unique lens of maritime disaster and recovery. 

[About the Drawing: S.T. “Corinthos,” a tanker forebody afloat in Pennsylvania, 1975.
Artwork by Bob Johnson for Alex Rynecki Ocean Engineers]

My News!

An Audio Excerpt from my Manuscript:
(August 2023)

Austin Kleon encourages creative people to show their work. As Kleon writes, “…it’s important to get things in front of other and see how they react.” It is, I confess, a little bit scary to share this. I recorded it a few weeks ago (thank you IMRSV Sound) and I’ve been sitting on it because, well, there are risks to sharing something so personal – you might not like it, you might judge my parenting, my writing, you might think my audio isn’t up to snuff, and you might have opinions about oh so many other things. I’ve been in turmoil for the last few days… post it, don’t post it. There are an equal number of reasons for me to share it and to not share it. But, in the end, living a creative life is about about believing in yourself and taking risks in the hope that a piece of this resonates with you. Please feel free to share this with others. It is, of course, why I posted it.

(Chapter 9) Unmoored: The Betty L

Audio isn’t your thing? You can read the two parts of the audio clip: Introduction and Chapter 9.

KQED
(December 2022)

I took a bite sized piece from my manuscript and turned it into a 2-minute piece for KQED radio’s Perspective program. Listen to it here: Living with ADHD

ADHD Resources:

If you are a parent struggling to understand your kid’s ADHD (or your own!), it can be incredibly overwhelming to figure it all out on your own. Here are a few resources I’ve found particularly helpful:

  • The Disruptors (a documentary film about ADHD). Their tagline: Forget Everything You Thought You Knew About ADHD
  • This two-part Ologies podcast about ADHD by Alie Ward has a lot of information. It’s long, but well worth a listen. I learned so much from it!
  • Jessica McCabe has a YouTube channel called How To ADHD. Most weeks she posts new videos with “tips, tricks and insights into the ADHD brain.” You can read more about her in this NYT article, Hello, Brains! A Life Spent Helping Others Understand A.D.H.D. Online
  • There are a lot of ADHDers posting content on Instagram about their day-to-day lives. I like it because it feels so “real” to me as opposed to more formal articles you might find elsewhere. I often share their postings in my stories. A good way to find people is to search hashtags like: #ADHD #adhdParenting #adhdProblems #Neurodivergent #adhdAwareness #adhdMom …. I think you get the idea! A few I’ve found particularly helpful: @ADHDJesse, @MattRaekelboom, @ADHD_Alien, @DaniDonovan, @ADHDElite, @ADHD_Love_
  • In September 2022, Harpers Bazaar published this article: Coming Into Focus about adult women with ADHD. The author, Carla Ciccone, is working on a book that, I believe, expands upon this article.

Books about ADHD:

  • How the ADHD Brain Works – A downloadable e-book from ADDitude Magazine. At times repetitive, but when I read it I kept thinking, THIS is my kid! A related note…. ADDitude’s website offers a TON of resources – online articles, webinars, a magazine, social media groups, links to professional resources, free downloads, newsletters, and a lot more.
  • Real People, Real ADHD: Stories of Struggles, Success, and Inspiration – By Merle Kaplan M.A., Peter Jaksa Ph.D. True to its title…everyday people and their challenges, successes, and struggles with ADHD. Everyone from tenured professors and home aid workers to entrepreneurs, college students, and tax attorney. If you’re looking for a better understanding of how ADHD shows up in people’s lives, this is a good way to peek inside their world. 
  • Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD – by Timothy Denevi. A memoir and history of the medical and psychological community’s understanding and history of treating ADHD. Denevi narrates his childhood – his impulses, frustrations, and successes both in school and at home intertwined with the psychologists and psychiatrists that have influenced and shaped the ways in which millions of children and young adults (and their parents!) navigate an ADHD diagnosis. 
  • plAyDHD: Permission to Play…..a Prescription for Adults With ADHD – by Dr. Kirsten Milliken. A psychologist and ADHD coach, Miliken writes from personal experience as someone who has ADHD and who works as a clinical psychologist. Her prescription is to go play and gamify life. My son already does a lot of these things and some of them don’t interest him, but Milliken offers a lot of great ideas about how to live with, manage, and harness play to find meaningful, positive, and rewarding ways to live with ADHD.
  • DIRTY LAUNDRY: Why adults with ADHD are so ashamed and what we can do to help – by Mr Richard Pink and Miss Roxanne Emery. I’m not sure I love the subtitle, but I do love their Instagram account. It’s “in the trenches” advice from a woman who has ADHD, her real world struggles, her partner’s gentle insights, and their willingness to be so honest about it all while having a sense of humor. On the days I feel like crying or pulling my hair out in trying to understand my son’s struggles, this is the book I plan to turn to again and again. It’s got helpful insights and reminders that I still need even though I now “get” my son’s struggles.

Ship Salvage:

In all the years Dad worked in ship salvage, he dealt with a lot of ships, cargo and otherwise. As a salvage engineering consultant, he worked on everything from aircraft carriers, barges, super tankers, passenger ships, and oil rigs and for a wide array of clients including the United States Navy, international salvage contractors, marine underwriters, diving companies, and once, NASA. By my tween years, he’d authored dozens of books, manuals, surveys, and reports on ocean engineering and marine salvage, many still available today on the U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage website.

Two articles that lend some insight into the work of a salvage engineer:

Two video clips about jobs that he worked on as the ship salvage engineer:

  • The Eldia – A video retrospective by CapeCast of the ship grounding on Cape Cod’s Nauset Beach.
  • The S.S. Sea Witch – This U.S. Coast Guard Training film is a bit dated, (I could do without the melodramatic music), but it’s amazing to me that this footage exists at all. Dad was later involved in the refloating of the ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The history: “On June 2, 1973, just after midnight, the SS C.V. Sea Witch, built by Bath Iron Works, was leaving New York harbor when the ship lost steering control and collided into the fully loaded tanker SS Esso Brussels, right under the Verrazano Bridge. The 31,000 barrels of crude oil released from three ruptured tanks ignited and the resulting fire engulfed both ships. A total of 16 crewmembers and two captains died in the tragedy. Nearby beaches were polluted and damage to the ships and cargo amounted to about $23 million.”