In the Beginning...

When I was cruising the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos 6 years ago, I'd never heard of a blog. Instead of blogging, I wrote a journal and then emailed it every few days to friends and family. Eventually, the email list grew. Everyone seemed to enjoy our adventures, or should I say, misadventures. Six years later, people are still asking me for copies of the journal. So here it is. Blog Style.

Prologue or (HOW THE HELL DID I GET INTO THIS?)

We talked about selling everything and moving onto the boat for years. I always said I was game, but part of me didn't believe it would ever really happen. I'd say, "But where will we put the piano?" Then I'd put the whole business out of my mind and settle back into my life like it was a lumpy, but comfortable armchair.

It had always been Wayne's dream--to go where the sun rarely misses a day, the water offers a pallet of blues and greens and pinks, and where the long straight trunks of royal palms shoot from the earth like geysers, fronds splashing green against a big southern sky.

I first heard of his plan in 1986 when we were new lovers and I was the harried mother of a five and seven year old. The idea intrigued me, having always lived in Maryland. In the early seventies, all the "cool kids" went to Ocean City to work for the summer with miles of beach that stretched from Assateague Island to Delaware Bay. Restaurants, bars, arcades, and clapboard summer cottages turned to musty rooming houses crowded along forty blocks of boardwalk. The "cool kids" worked their shifts, then hung on 9th Street, jeans slung low on hips, army jackets on brisk evenings, small baggies and corncob pipes tucked in their knapsacks. To me a summer job there represented freedom and adventure. I went to music camp in New Jersey, instead.

My only cross country trip was a "drive by"--grassy foot hills, smelly rivers, then fields of yellow grain, pine-covered mountains. We skipped the Grand Canyon--my ex had already seen it. Then on to orange craggy mesas with Dr. Seuss cacti--all these things flying by the car window like the filmed backdrop in an old movie.

Yes, it was Wayne's dream, but I thought, Maybe some day I will run away with Wayne, even if it is on a boat.

Our life went on. We moved from ball practices and games to BMX races, high school concerts, and color guard spectacles. We survived first dances, first loves, lost loves, school suspensions, and honor rolls. We started a home-based business recycling toner cartridges. A sometimes motley assortment of employees passed in and out of our lives slopping coffee on my kitchen floor. A big chunk of my forties disappeared along with Wayne's fifties.

Then one spring evening I came home to find Wayne with his feet propped up on his desk. It looked like any other day.

"I called Rich today," he said.

"Why?" I asked, kicking off my shoes. Rich was one of our friendly competitors.

"I was downstairs working in the shop, and I thought why am I doing this? So I called him and asked him if he wanted to buy our business."

BIG GULP! That was me.

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He said, 'Yes.'"

Remember the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where they jump off the cliff. What was it they yelled? "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH S--T!" That's exactly how I felt.

Within a month, we were moving boxes, supplies, and employees to our competitor's shop. All summer I gardened and landscaped to prepare for the sale of the house, while Wayne prepped the boat. For years I'd been too busy to garden, but now I realized this might be the last time I'd have the chance. And the musky smell of the dirt took me back twenty years when my mom and I shared a big garden. Aaron would sleep on a blanket in the shade while Grace spooned dirt into plastic cups. Digging again made me feel grounded--no pun intended--as if I were planting my feet along with those perennials, but soon I would be dangling my feet in an ever-changing sea or drifting over it in a boat.

In the evenings, Wayne and I laboriously sifted through our treasures to determine what we could give away, stash, lend, or trash. Every thing I touched evoked a memory. Pictures. Here's me in an Easter bonnet, a cap and gown, a wide-brimmed wedding hat, on a hospital bed with a baby in my arms, another baby. What would my new life look like? A cap on my head and a grouper in my hands? A straw hat and a pina colada? This made me laugh and I allowed myself the luxury of drifting in and out of each memory. Wayne did the same thing with rusty hand tools that were once his grandfather's and tee shirts commemorating every footrace he ever ran and every bar he wanted to remember since the 1960s.

But, unloading the "baggage" was actually liberating. I felt lighter, like the feeling you get when you step out the door after your last final exam or finally get that envelope in the mailbox before midnight on April 15th.

By fall, there was nothing left, except the bare essentials, and I painted the entire house, except for one spot behind the door in the laundry room. The spot where we measured the kids on their birthdays--Grace's marks only a quarter inch a part. Aaron's starting below hers and moving up the wall and inch or two, sometimes three at a time, until they passed hers, mine, and Wayne's. Another memory. I could see them--heels against the baseboard, chests out, heads held high. I could hear the scratch of the pencil as it made the mark. Tears. A part of my life was over, but staying in the house would not change that. My kids were adults and had their own busy lives. Did I want to stick around and be an empty-nester, looking forward to Sunday's when they might stop by for supper? Did I want to stay until Wayne's and my pencil marks started to work their way down the wall? Did I?

The house was ready for sale, but we had no takers. I joined Wayne at the marina every day to work on the boat. We scraped and painted and wired and caulked. We named the boat "The Ella McQuaid" after Wayne's grandma. No sailboat for us. The Ella McQuaid was a 1987 forty-one foot Symbol, nearly fifteen feet wide, a cross between a sportfish and a cruiser with a large desk instead of an aft cabin. The salon was big enough for a full size sofa, a reclining chair, a coffee table, and a secretary. No piano. She had two staterooms, a dining area that seated four, a good-sized galley, and a head with a shower. The boat was perfect for living aboard and cruising, except for her gasoline engines--two big 454s, instead of economical and long-lasting diesels. We considered replacing them, but decided that the $30,000 plus required for the purchase and installation of new engines would buy more gas than we would ever need.

Finally, we sold the house, and by July we were ready to leave. Everything we thought we needed or just couldn't part with was hidden in Ella McQuaid's nooks and crannies. Were we a forty one foot sea turtle taking our home with us where we went? Were we two homeless people pushing a forty-one foot shopping cart?

Family and friends visited to say good-bye in the weeks prior to our departure, but on the humid July morning we left, our son Aaron was there to shove us off. I stood on the deck crying and waving while he stood on the dock doing the same. His tee shirt was bright red and it disappeared as we motored out of the creek.

When we came to the first gas station, not ten minutes later, I was still sniveling. Wayne approached the dock and the attendant threw me a line. I moved to a cleat on the bow, knelt down, and started wrapping the line around the cleat.

"Hurry up!" Wayne shouted, "The wind's blowing the stern around."

I sniveled and wrapped.

"Stop moving like an old woman," he shouted.

I choked back the tears, but they welled up in my eyes until I couldn't see. What had I gotten myself into?