My Anchor

An anchor does its work out of sight. On a calm day nobody on deck admires it; it is a lump of iron hanging at the bow. Then the wind comes up, the ship starts to swing, and everything depends on whether it holds.

Sailors know it holds because of what is let out as much as the iron itself. The usual rule is to pay out five to seven feet of line or chain for every foot of water, so the pull stays low and flat along the bottom instead of lifting the anchor free. The flukes dig in, and the length of line behind them keeps them digging.

Fathers tend to work the same way. Most of the work is done in the hours when nothing seems to be happening: the rides, the dinners, the same calm answer given a hundred times, so that on the bad day a kid knows where the ground is.

The picture is two colors on cream. DAD is spelled in heavy navy capitals, with an anchor standing where the A should be, laid over a coral letter A, its left half navy and its right half coral. Below the word, in small blue script, are the words 'my anchor.'