I am lucky to have friends like Paul and Maggie Bangs who jumped at the chance to take my dad out last Sunday on Ralph Packer’s tug Sirius in honor of his 86th birthday. It wasn’t just a boat ride for us that day, though. It was an emotional journey back to a time when my dad lived and breathed the world of tugboats. All my life and for the majority of his, my dad was a marine broker. He sold ocean tugs and barges, knew everyone in the marine shipping industry and was extremely well known in his field as one of the best. I was just entering high school when my dad started his own marine brokerage firm in a small office in our home. I was lucky to watch someone so close to me start his own business. He truly started from scratch, loved every minute of it and taught me a lot about what it means to create something you believe in.

I would come home from school, walk up our front steps and hear his voice before I even entered. He was constantly talking to people all over the world, setting up deals, connecting people, talking in every accent imaginable. People have always loved my dad, and from a young age I knew why. He not only sold boats, he offered a respite from the world, a funny story, a reason to laugh, was someone who cared on the other end of the line. He has had a knack for touching people for as long as I can remember, and he taught me what it means to pay it forward.

My mom grew up on the Island and graduated from the Tisbury School with Betty Cottle and Shirley Kennedy, with whom she remained best friends until her death in 1999. After graduating, my mom got a job as a medical secretary at the marine hospital, where she met my dad while he was a patient and in the Coast Guard. He always said it was love at first sight and all he could think of doing was to ask her for a dictionary just to be able to talk to her. The rest is history. Even though my dad was a washashore, he has always loved the Island and how it brought him to his beautiful wife Joanne.

My dad suffered a devastating stroke in 2007 and in an instant, thousands of details, relationships, contacts, interests and years and years of experiences and memories slipped away overnight. He woke up paralyzed and unable to speak. At first it was so hard. He had to relearn how to walk and talk. It was sad to watch a man who hadn’t yet retired from a business he loved struggle to keep his head upright or eat solid food on his own. My dad has slowly healed because we live on this incredible Island where hundreds of people have rallied over the years to help him in many different ways, including outstanding doctors and therapists like Nancy Langman and Victoria Haeselbarth whose support groups bring people together with memory issues. My dad also healed because our beautiful, kind neighbors take the time to chat with him on the way to the post office even though he might not remember their names, invite him out to dinner or send over a box of cupcakes just because. The best medicine of all is taken in the form of old friends like John Hughes, who at 93 rallies all the poker buddies every other week to come to the house and get my dad playing cards, laughing and remembering.

For my dad’s 86th birthday, I asked Paul and Maggie Bangs if it would be possible to take him out on the water in Ralph’s tug, just for old time’s sake. Paul is captain of the Sirius. They agreed in an instant and what a wonderful experience it was for us. In his day, my dad was a master at relaying endless specs on horsepower, engine stats or the latest happenings in the field of marine brokerage. But now he sees things so purely. He fully experiences each moment with no filter, no judgment and no expectation, just wonder. When we got dad up into the wheelhouse and sat him in the captain’s chair, he started beaming from ear to ear. Being out on the water in a tug was special for all of us; for him it had a resonance that he may not have been able to articulate, but his face told the whole story.

Ralph Packer told me how he remembered my mom and Betty and Shirley, who were a few years older than him at the Tisbury School. I imagine them cruising around town, flirting with boys and running the teen center where the Katharine Cornell Theatre is now. To me they still are the most beautiful girls on the Island, full of laughter and memories and life experiences anyone would admire. I still find John Hughes one of the most handsome, interesting men I have ever met, and his stories rival just about anyone’s. Their generation are our true Island treasures. If we take the time to let them, they inspire us with their wisdom, their fascinating lives and patient eyes. Many of them are gone now and some have weathered difficult storms, including my dad. But seeing him on that tugboat was one more reminder of how lucky we are to live here still among this generation of Islanders who are clearly our most valuable natural resource.

My husband Brad and my two boys Finn and Justin help me take care of my dad, and we agree we wouldn’t have it any other way. We all live together and it’s a true group effort. Not a day goes by that my dad doesn’t let us all know how grateful he is to have “three generations under one roof” and what an incredible gift it is to eat breakfast with his grandsons or play poker with his son in law and his poker buddies every other week.

After the tugboat ride was over, Dad told me how much fun he had and asked me why Maggie and Paul would do such a nice thing for him. In that instant I had a flash of remembering Paul’s parents Stuart and Dorothy Bangs and all the wonderful parties and nights he and my mom had with them, the Cottles and the Kennedys, Renears, Van Ripers among many others. I remembered music and laughter and huge, messy dinner parties with games and music. They all shared raising children, weddings, babies and funerals — they shared life. They were all so much fun to be around. So I smiled at my dad, gave him a big hug and said: “Because that’s just the kind of people they are. You have spent your life doing nice things for people; now it’s your turn to just enjoy the kindness of others.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s incredible.”

I say it takes an Island and our birthday celebration aboard the Sirius is the perfect example. Where else would you find two people like Maggie and Paul who took time out on a beautiful Sunday morning to sail around with an old timer like my dad? They clearly have mastered the art of paying it forward, and I am so grateful.

May we all remember the importance of reaching out to those you love and making the effort to make them happy. As an Island community may we especially remember and care for our beautiful elderly population. Let’s not do it because they are tired and infirm and we feel sorry for them, but because we all have so much to learn from them. There are many stories yet to be heard, walks to be taken together. May we never be too busy for a conversation on the sidewalk, a helping hand with the groceries or an invitation to the movies. Look around your life and notice who may need a pick-me-up, a simple chat on the phone or a cup of afternoon tea.

It’s hard to imagine but someday the world might not make quite as much sense as it does now, and you may find yourself all turned around and unsure of your next step and even a little bit lonely and scared. Then out of nowhere, a beautiful and vaguely familiar soul will stop you to chat on the sidewalk, take your arm and lead you home. You’ll ask them why in the world would they do something so nice for you. And they will smile back at you, give you a hug and remind you that there’s no need to worry, that you are loved by a whole Island, that you have spent your life doing nice things for others and now it’s your turn to just enjoy the ride.

Polly Simpkins lives in Vineyard Haven.