When I put the car in reverse yesterday to head toward the marina in Salem, I felt a slight tremor from the back seat. I wasn’t too surprised by the rumble, because I knew it was coming; it was question number one out of what I projected to be a potential 427 for the day. As the steering wheel shook, Iz asked, “Mom, are we like going to France or what?”
I laughed out loud a bit; it was so funny I couldn’t contain the laughter in my head, and then I said, “No.” Iz, sensing my amusement, said, “No. I mean like what state is it in?” I said, “It’s in Salem, which is in this state.”
She said, “Oh, the witches!” I forgot that even though she played a witch on Halloween, she was terribly scared of them in real life. Sensing that I should have said Saskatchewan instead of Salem, I hoped that what I said didn’t require not passing Main Street and collecting sailing. Then Iz said, “I love Salem. I just don’t want to go there on Halloween.”
Besides the location of the boat, her only other concern when she found out Brenda and Steve’s sailboat wasn’t a yacht was if she could go “under” the boat. I asked, “Do you mean is there a cabin area below the deck?” She nodded affirmatively, and I told her there was; she seemed elated by the idea, perhaps thinking it made the sailboat some kind of fort on water.
After about five when-are-we-going-to-get-theres, we arrived in Salem. We were looking for a “tall ship,” which was not to be confused with Brenda and Steve’s sailboat; we were supposed to call Brenda so she could meet us at the dock when we passed this ship. I said to Iz, “Gee, this is sort of like a scavenger hunt.”
Iz said, “Oh, Mommy, there it is.” We had just passed an alley. I highly doubted Iz’s sighting, so to be diplomatic, I said, “I think Brenda said that it was further up the street.”
After we passed a building, I saw a huge open area and a very tall ship. I said, “There it is.” I grabbed my phone and called Brenda. Iz said, “Is that their boat?”
I laughed, totally to myself this time. I said, “No. That’s not it.” Iz frowned, and I said, “But, it looks just like that only a bit smaller!”
We arrived in the parking lot, grabbed our bag and our cooler, and walked to the dock to wait for Brenda. Trying to totally be in “ready for the long voyage” mode, I asked Iz if she needed a call of Nature. She said she did; thus, we exited "dock right" for the woman's room so we would “be prepared” like every good sailor or Boy Scout, if we were boys and scouts and not girls and sailors.
Once Brenda arrived, we took the launch out to the sailboat. The instant Iz saw it, she fell in love. No, it wasn’t with the sailboat; it was with the dingy. She liked the sailboat, but for some reason, she became obsessed with the dingy, perhaps because in true Goldilocks fashion, it was just the right size for her.
Steve greeted us and we climbed aboard. Iz was somewhat quiet; I sensed she might be sick, because questions thirty-two and thirty-three were behind schedule. As Brenda and Steve prepared for our departure, Iz said, “Mommy, when are we going to leave?” Thank goodness; there was question thirty-two.
The longer she sat there waiting, the more she asked the question; this made me think. Was this question when asked a second time question thirty-two again or question thirty-three? When she asked the 32nd question for the 8th time or the 40th question, I repeated my 9th answer, which was, “Soon!”
I didn’t know if she was nervous or excited. I thought it was a bit of both. I knew the trip could go either way; she’d spend it in her fort or she’d have Brenda, Steve, and I down in the galley washing dishes in less than 45 minutes.
Kids are funny. I’m stating the obvious, I know. What trip isn’t without its battles? On this trip, it was Iz versus her lifejacket for the entire day.
By law, she had to wear one; and I wanted her to wear one. Iz had other ideas and she was willing to go to court over it. Her opening statement as we prepared to get under way was, “Why do I have to wear one when you don’t?” as she waved her index finger around pointing to the adult jury and judges.
I finally got it on her; however, then it was time for “Goldilocks and the Three Inconveniences of Wearing a Life Jacket.” It was too tight, it was tan, and it made her not like the others on deck. The best we could do was loosen up the straps, and this seemed to make Goldilocks happy for about 30 minutes.
Once the life jacket battle subsided, Iz had to check out the fort. Unfortunately, I told her that she didn’t have to wear her life jacket while in the fort, so it appeared she might spend the entire trip below deck. Fortunately, she found out that the fort wasn’t as cool as the four season porch above.
Once underway, as if a fish to water, Iz began to make it clear that she was a sailor but totally on the fast track to becoming captain of the vessel. When Steve took the wheel, Iz stood nearby. I do believe that is when questions 41 through 56 occurred, and Steve patiently explained everything to her.
If I didn’t know any better, when Iz was drawing in the backseat of the car on the trip to Salem, she was really diagramming her hostile takeover of the sailboat. I’m sure it went something like, “I’ll lock Brenda in the head, I’ll put Mommy in the storage closet, and I’ll tie Steve to the life line, because I’m going to need him until I get my sailing license.” Of course, this is why most corporate big wigs sail; it’s where they got their start!
At one point, probably due to frazzlement from questions 57 through 119, Steve explained the water depth meter to Iz a second time. Iz said, “You already told me that!” Like me, it seemed that Iz felt from the moment she got on the boat that being with Brenda and Steve was like being with two people you had never not known to be in your life.
Of course, being seven years old, Iz had to touch everything. If the boat should become a mutiny crime scene, everyone would know that Iz was the prime suspect due to the fingerprints she left all over the instrumentation. I reminded her not to touch, and she said, “My bad.”
I had never heard her use that expression before. I remember when Nathan started using it; I never liked it for some reason, but now that Iz said it, I found it awfully funny. Nathan exchanged “my bad” for “I don’t really care” two years ago; I’d take Iz’s “my bad” any day.
After 20 minutes or so, Steve shut the motor off, and we began to sail. I guess Iz was a true sailor, because she didn’t like the motor; I don’t know if it was the sound or whether she was a sailing purist. I encouraged her to come up to the front of boat, and she came along stuffed in her life jacket and holding on to the life line as instructed.
We sat down, her in front of me. At one point, the boat began to heel. We were only a few feet from the water, and Iz said, “Mom, hold me tighter!”
She seemed scared out of her wits; I thought this might be the end of our almost Titanic “I’m flying” time. Ten seconds after the boat straighten out, Iz asked, “Can we do that again?!?!?!” This question was closely followed by question 120, which was “When are we going to see sea anemones?”
Iz also liked the “goggles.”When she first put them on, she had them upside down. Of course, maybe it was a better way to see the world.
When it came time for lunch, we decided to moor the boat near the Misery islands. Of course, before lunch, there was another small battle going on; okay, it was more like an encouraged and forced activity. Iz wanted to swim off the boat.
In fact, she was so intent on swimming that she changed into her bathing suit (after the appropriate alterations were made to the fort below so no one could see her changing into her anti-shark swim suit) about 30 minutes before we moored. She then asked when I was going to change into my suit; I told her soon. Then Iz asked the same of Brenda.
I saw her approach Steve and then question 125 came out her mouth. I said, “Iz, it’s a law that someone must stay on the boat at all times.” Steve agreed, and I’m sure he was glad that Iz was not making him walk the plank into the 61 degrees of Atlantic Ocean below us.
Once we ate lunch, Iz paced the deck. “Can we go swimming now?” It became clear that we were not leaving Misery without some misery in the form of frigid waters.
When the time came, I knew that I would not be able to take the ladder into the water. I’d never get in step-by-step. Then Steve mentioned the cannonball off the side, which I found was they key to misery. A count to 10, and I was in; and after coming up out of the water, I knew exactly what it felt like to be a Polar Bear without the fur coat.
Gutsy Brenda got in by the ladder. Once I swam around to her, we both agreed that we could not feel our arms; l guess being cold was okay as long as it was a mutual feeling. Where was Iz?!
She made her way down the ladder. True to form, once her big toe hit the water, she began to climb back up the ladder. I think that’s when she said something about needing to get back on the boat and get her towel because she was –gasp- cold.
After Brenda and I had braved the water, there was no way she was getting out. If she wanted to be the leader of the pack, then she needed to live by Polar Bear example. I said, “Come on. Get in!”
With her life vest on, she dropped into the water. I think only then she realized that this was not the same water that was in the town pool where she went for swimming lessons. To her credit, she paddled around the boat with us.
She begged me to take her life vest off, so she could swim “under water.” Now, she was not only a captain in training, but somewhere between the bow of the boat and the ladder, she had morphed into Jacques Cousteau, hoping probably to catch a view of those sea anemones. I took her vest off and handed it up to Steve.
She told me she was going to swim to me, and she did. She did this a few times, and I was amazed by what a good swimmer she had become in the short time she had been taking swimming lessons at camp. Part of me winced, which was not because of the cold water; it was because I knew I had entered the working world again, and there were going to be these surprises that I once knew about on a daily basis.
After Brenda and I had totally become one with the sea, Iz decided that it was time to retreat! She told us once again that she was just going to go on deck and get her towel. I think she even said she might be back; however, I knew once swaddled in fur, the polar bear would remain on the iceberg!
Before Brenda and I could dry off, Iz was wandering around the deck saying to Steve, “Let’s get this show on the road!” If she had been an adult, we probably would have thrown her overboard. Since she was 7 years old, we all laughed.
She helped put the sail up.
On the trip back, I couldn’t keep track of her. She was at the wheel next to Steve, where it was an “it’s okay to take your life jacket off here because you’re not near the water” zone. Though, at a certain point, I knew it was much more about being with Steve than about taking her life jacket off.
When she wasn’t telling Steve how to steer his own sailboat, she was going up and down the boat as if effortlessly walking along a tight rope. I now had to remind her to hold onto things as she traveled, because her sea legs and her good sense of balance told her otherwise. The deck had now become Iz’s playground on water.
At one point, when I was sitting by the wheel, Iz traveled toward the bow. She stood there not holding onto anything. Then she started doing a funky dance; I had no idea what possessed her, other than the great feeling it was to be part of a good crew.
As we sailed slowly back to the harbor in Salem, Iz traveled up to the bow to see me. She sat down for a second. It was long enough for her to say, “This was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be.”
She left and made her way back down to Steve. If I didn’t know any better, he was now her BFF.
I sat there listening to the sound of the water.
I watched the water sparkle like “diamonds” so said Iz.
And, I thought, “If I were to die tomorrow, and I had to name the best 20 days of my life, this would surely be one of them.”
As I get older, I realize how much things like the ocean, the wind, and the sun shining on my face mean to me; they mean so much more than a unreliable red Italian convertible, the perfect lipstick, or a pair of killer stilettos. Swimming in the frigid Atlantic, feeling the salt on my skin, and riding the waves on the bow of a boat is far greater than any amusement park ride could ever be. And while it was important to be in the Atlantic Ocean with a life jacket on, there was no better feeling than being in a moment with the arms of two very wonderful friends wrapped around you. ♥
1 comment:
just for the record, we had a ball at your "old new" place of employment while you sailed!!....it was lovely dealing with edge conditions!! : - )
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