I’m back in Seattle’s fall but still dreaming of summer boat crossings. Every dream involves the drama of whether or not I will be able “to make the boat.” In an ideal summer I would only make two crossings: one to arrive on the Vineyard, and one to leave. This wasn’t that summer.

My father had a stroke on June 2. Second only in magnitude to the summer my sister added twin girls to the number of occupants in our Camp Ground cottage, this was the summer of change. When my dad was deemed ready to be released from inpatient rehabilitation there was no doubt, despite being 90 miles from his primary care doctors, the best place for recovery was in Oak Bluffs. Where but in the gingerbread cottages can you sneeze and have your neighbor say bless you?

Even if I had to fly to Boston instead of Martha’s Vineyard Airport there were times with my mother waiting at the terminal we could still be on the first Island Queen to Oak Bluffs. This year an off-Island hospital detour pushed the delay from hours to days. Missing the Oak Bluffs fireworks was just the beginning. It was the last boat days later before I touched Island soil, only to be mainland-bound again by morning. Over the course of just three weeks I filled commuter punch cards, on the Patriot, the Island Queen and the Steamship Authority.

Once I let go of the idea that this was any other summer of my past, I learned new skills. How to switch from ordering at Mocha Mott’s to being in line at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Main street in Falmouth. I learned how to jump off the Patriot’s Quickwater in Falmouth and hop into the middle seat of the big white van for the drop at Pier 37 while others continued on to “the church.” I found the handicapped parking on the side terminal building in Woods Hole.

I sat with travelers unexpectedly bound for Falmouth rather than New Bedford because the seas were too rough for the Sea Streak. I came to recognize those who live on the Island and go off to work, and their counterparts. Whenever I had a breakfast bagel at Mocha Mott’s I could appreciate that it had come over before dawn on the Patriot boat, along with the newspapers. I watched fresh fish be sent both ways and was one boat too early the day a chef’s wife sent over pulled pork to his food truck.

I watched in Woods Hole as one crew member from the SSA wheeled my mother’s bag down their switchback gangplank while another pushed my father’s wheelchair all the way to the car and then helped him buckle his seat belt. At the Island Queen dock in Falmouth the man at the dock instructed me where to stand so they could help my father onto the boat first. One trip they completely redid the gangplanks and ramps just to make it smoother for my father. As a child we lived in fear of ferry workers who seemed to have the power of gods over transportation. When did everyone become so kind?

I wandered the old and new of the hospital while my dad had speech therapy, feeling as if I was trespassing in a four-star hotel while I sat in the lounge across from maternity that overlooks Vineyard Haven harbor. The beauty of the roof garden made my heart race. The garden beds appear topped by the oak trees in the distance. When you step close enough to see the Lagoon, the sun on the water is blinding in more ways than one.

Standing on the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital garden deck, I couldn’t help but regret that the facility with its new emergency department and blood bank wasn’t available to us almost 20 years ago. That was the year my late husband’s long illness unexpectedly reached a crisis point with no ferry until morning and a blood transfusion waiting in Falmouth.

But on that September morning the doctor himself thanked me for holding out till near dawn and the acting fire chief gave permission for the Oak Bluffs ambulance to leave the Island. No sirens, I begged, and yet I remember the roar of the strong engines as we drove to Vineyard Haven. I remember asking if we would make the boat. For sleepless hours I had been worrying, wondering how to get Jim to the blood that would save his life for at least a few more days.

“They’re holding the boat,” the EMT riding in back told me. In all the years of racing to make the boat, the memory of its waiting for us still gives me chills.

One of my father’s doctors refused to treat him because he wasn’t “local.” His local; not ours. The Island was the best place for my father to regain his strength, from navigating his walker to the backyard shower or the daily drive for the free coffee at the Oak Bluffs Council on Aging. Whether transporting pulled pork, newspapers or my father, we have not missed a single boat this summer, but how I miss those crossings that still rule in my dreams, because we always make the boat.

Peggy Sturdivant lives in Oak Bluffs and Seattle.