For the first time since the kids were born 15 years ago, we awoke on Christmas morning away from home. Instead of driving down to visit family the day after Christmas like we normally do, we decided that since the Virginia to Florida drive is so long (16 hours), we would show up on Christmas Eve instead. The stay is too short for that many hours of driving if we wait. The kids are big enough that they didn’t mind being away this once.
Reading, barefooted, on the lanai in December
We relaxed in sunshine. We saw grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. We ate lots of food, visited lots of family. We gabbed. We swam. We shopped. We walked a marina during the day and the beach at sunset.
Moored sailboats in Sarasota BaySunset, Siesta Key, Christmas Day
Siesta Key sunset on our final night in Florida
We looked for seashells.
Seashells on Siesta Beach
One of the unexpected gems of this Christmas was the beautiful blown crystal martini glasses my mother-in-law pulled out of a blue Tiffany & Co. box on Christmas Eve. They keep all sorts of good gin at their house — Aviation, Hendricks, Tanqueray — and in addition to all the visiting, beaching, shopping, and other merriment, a highlight of the trip for me was drinking fine gin martinis out of Tiffany glasses.
I carried my digital camera in my suitcase to Boston for our Support Driven Leadership Summit last week, and I left it in my room at the Airbnb the entire time. I didn’t do much better with the camera on my phone, but I did capture a couple of memories. The leaves peaked while we were there over Halloween. Late October was a beautiful time to visit.
Paul Revere’s tomb, from a walk with friends along Boston’s Freedom Trail
A walk along the East Promenade in Portland, Maine
After Summit ended, Scott (my colleague) and I had a rental car and wanted to get out of town. We were going to go to Salem, but Scott’s from the other Portland (Oregon), and it was his birthday, and when we realized Portland was only a 2 hour drive, we decided to go for it while we were so close. It was rainy, just like the other Portland.
Standing barefoot on the bow Saturday, with my arm wrapped around the forestay and feeling the liquid world move under my feet, I fell in love. I fell in love with sailing, I fell in love with the Chesapeake (again), and I fell in love with our little boat, Egretta.
That morning, after being discontent with my performance hoisting and lowering the sails on the previous day’s trip, I sat on the airbnb porch with my notebook. Steam drifted from my coffee cup, and I declared to my husband that I was setting a goal: by the end of next summer, I wanted to be able to do everything on a daysail, end to end, from motoring away from the boat ramp, to skippering the journey, to docking at the end of a sail. I was tired of feeling incompetent on the boat.
As I talked it through with him, though, I began to realize that’s an ambitious goal for someone who doesn’t even know how to do their current job on the boat: crewing. Aiming for complete mastery of sailing within 12 months is like wanting to be executive chef in a year without knowing how to use a knife right now. Becoming a chef or a sailor takes years, and the paths to both begin with the basics.
For months now I’ve felt intimidated. There’s so much to learn: hauling sails, lowering sails, tying knots, skippering, trailering; how to use the forces of wind and water to move the boat forward using canvas, keel, and rudder; knowing when to do anything and knowing what needs to be done; boating rules, regulations, etiquette; outboard usage and maintenance; keeping the boat from capsizing and knowing what to do if it does roll; safety; vocabulary. His hand on the tiller, Brian will tell me something like “Don’t forget the topping lift,” and I won’t even know what he’s talking about. How can I expect to be in command and tell everyone what needs to be done when I don’t even know the parts of the boat and the language of sailing, much less why the topping lift would need to be remembered?
Egretta at sunrise
I sipped coffee on the porch, the rising sun glistening on spiderwebs as my folly dawned on me, and as the solution revealed itself. I was paralyzed by the journey of 1000 miles rather than animated by the single step in front of me. As I am prone to do, I focused so much on the end goal — knowing how to sail — that I didn’t break it down into the steps I need to take to me to get there.
That first step, I now realize, is to master my role as crew: raising and lowering the sails, helping the skipper by knowing my job when we’re underway (lookout, trimming the jib, watching for obstacles, paying attention, being aware), learning the language so we can communicate with precision, keeping lines neat and safe, keeping alert for the radio, and various other tasks I am currently mediocre at at best.
As crew, I have a specific job with components that are mine to own, that I can fiddle with until I truly understand how everything works, that I can hone the processes of until they are smooth and I can do them instinctively. This simplification, to sharpen one skillset, has given me a specific role I can master. It has given me a purpose. It has removed the fear and ineptitude I felt because of my lack of knowledge.
This has changed everything for me. Where before I had a wall up, where before I was nervous about sailing, now I can’t stop thinking about it. On our first sail after my mindset shift, I no longer felt like a bumbling idiot. Instead, I felt the eagerness of a novice apprenticing. I felt confident, a vessel for new experiences. I began to get to know our boat. I began to get attached. Standing barefoot on the bow after our sail, with my arm wrapped around the forestay and feeling the liquid world move beneath us, I fell in love.
On our drive home Sunday, I kept checking the rearview mirror to see our little boat behind the car. “I feel like we have a family of seven now,” I said. “The four of us, Tootsie and Tubbles [our cats], and Egretta.”
If you’re interested in more details about that first sail as true crew, I wrote about it in the Becoming crew post on my sailing blog.
I must have taken 100 photographs yesterday for the transient photo challenge: everything about the beach is impermanent. Waves roll in, crash, spend out, and they are gone. Shells clack together and crumble in the pounding surf. Sea grass clumps wash ashore, then lift and move as waves wash over the flat sand. Surfers follow the swells: they appear when there are waves, and vanish when the sea is flat. Shore birds follow the tides, follow the fish, follow the tiny coquina clams that surface in the swash zone, then burrow back into the sand when the water recedes.
I photographed waves, shells, surfers, turtle nests. I photographed froth as it moved over the sand, sand as it moved over my toes, my toes as they were washed clean in fizzy bubble water.
Standing in the swash zone, where sand shifts under my feet
I photographed surfers bobbing, dozens of them clustered in the same tiny strip of shallows, where the sand under the surface is just right to break waves for surfing. I photographed surfers standing on the shore, boards under their arms, pointing at sets coming in. I photographed surfers standing up on waves.
Bobbing in the surfA pretty wave
What is most transient of all, though, most impermanent to me and my family right now, is the family condo we are staying in. This is our final vacation here before the condo is sold. My husband came here for the first time the year he was born, and has come nearly every summer in the 44 years since that first visit. Our children have grown up with this condo and this beach, too, and I wanted to capture as much as I could before it’s gone from us.
Shorebird breakfastingTurtle nest and sea oatsWater rushing back out to seaMy morning writing spot
Writing in the morningI’m sitting in a beach chair 4 inches off the ground, a cup of coffee in the soft white sand by my right hand, watching perfect tubes of waves run up the beach like zippers closing. I’ve written another pen out of ink, am talking with my husband about sailboats and the physics of ocean waves, and I am happy. I love vacation.
I am a friend to the sand, to the swath of washed up coquina shells, to my long shadow that stretches down the beach towards the ocean. I am a friend to my notebook pages that flap in the sea breeze, to the bright orange swim shirt my son wears, to the jagged choppy waves.
I am a friend to my mom’s red-strapped canvas L.L. Bean bag that says Mamma S? The single letter after Mamma is worn off — I’m not sure if it was a B for her first name, an S for her last name, or something else. I am a friend to the red folding nylon chair I sit in, with its mesh cup holder for my phone, and its carrying bag with a strap I can put over my shoulder to tote it hands-free when we go back to the car and I need my fingers for flip-flops and fun noodles.
I am a friend to the bubbles the Atlantic makes as wave remnants swash up the beach on their journey across great distance: they’ve travelled to the edge of the sea. I am a friend to the white froth of the crashing waves, the green-brown-blue water of the Georgia coast.
I am a friend to the dead reeds washed ashore, to the sand castles made from carefully dumped buckets, to the cobalt blue shovel and the hot pink plastic pail. I am a friend to my son’s black soccer slides, my daughter’s watermelon flip-flops, and my brown leather Rainbow sandals with the braided straps.
I am a friend to this olive green surf skirt with pockets for my phone and car keys, this skirt that has been with me to Hawaii, Tybee, Anna Maria, Sarasota, the Outer Banks, Mexico, Claytor Lake, that has covered bathing suits and birthday suits, that has faded and needs to be retired but I can’t bear to let it go.
I am a friend to the black hairband on my wrist, to the gray cap on my head that contains flyaways when the wind is blowing and I want to focus on writing instead of pulling strands of hair out of my eyes and mouth.
I am a friend to the white wisps of cirrus clouds high in the dome of the atmosphere. I am a friend to the teal of the evening sky, the tan of the beach, the shell pink of my toenail polish. I am a friend to the black ink that gives form to my thoughts on these white, blue-lined pages.
This was a 10-minute free write inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s prompt to list inanimate objects in response to the phrase, “I am a friend to…” The intention is to pull us outside of ourselves, to wake us to our surroundings and help us pay attention. The angle of the prompt — “I am a friend to” — also helped me have gratitude for these simple, beautiful things that I might otherwise just observe (or not observe) and move on with my life.
Butterfly Mind 