I Cancelled the Boat Before I Knew Why

It was meant to be the highlight of the holiday: a booked half-day pleasure-boat trip, out to see the seals, the kind of thing you plan the week around. The children had talked of nothing else. We were on the quay, tickets in hand, life jackets being handed out, the boat bobbing prettily at the steps, and I was as excited as they were.

And then I wasn't. Standing on the quay, minutes from boarding, a reluctance came over me that had no source and would not be reasoned with — a heavy, physical unwillingness to put my children on that boat, a dread that thickened the closer we got to the steps. I have racked my memory for a trigger, some subconscious cue — a smell of diesel, a listing hull, a crewman's worried face — and there was nothing. The day was calm, the boat was full of cheerful families, the operator was licensed and reviewed and ordinary. There was no reason. There was only the dread, mounting, until it became unbearable, until the thought of my children on that water was a physical sickness.

I pulled them out of the line. To their absolute fury — and I mean fury, the injustice of a lifetime, tears and stamping and a resentment that lasted the rest of the day — I said we weren't going, made up something about my stomach, and steered two sobbing children away from the seals they'd been promised while a boat full of other families cast off without us.

I felt monstrous. Irrational, cruel, a mother ruining a holiday over a feeling. I bought ice creams by way of apology and endured the sulking and privately questioned my sanity.