We Take to the Waves

Editors Note: This week I start branching out a bit with posts that are both more current and more personal. The pieces are about our boat and homeschool lives, but won't have the same draft, edit, redraft, and post process so they are likely to be less polished.

toast and mera
Originally uploaded by sammy baby.

Mera and I traveled to Philadelphia last week to visit an extraordinary person. Sometimes you look in the eyes of your child and realize that the only way to explain something is to show her. With Mera, I knew that I needed to take her to someone who could provide a living example of how to live with your inner child successfully inhabiting your outer shell. Life, love, success, family are all attainable even when your mind is full of fanciful ideas and fantastical imagery.

Of course, while that was a successful experiment -- Mera and Keet took to one another precisely as I anticipated -- the unexpected fall out was to discover that Mera is not actually a fairy disguised as a little boat girl, but rather she is a mermaid disguised as a fairy in a 9 year old muggle costume.

Mera took to the waves and perforce I also spent hours tumbling around off the coast of Ocean City, NJ like a rock in a jewelers polishing can. We rolled around in the swells from an offshore front for nearly four hours. Every so often I would persuade my mergirl to emerge for a brief warming period during which she queried me with relentless efficiency, "Are we done yet? Are we warm yet? Is rest time over yet?"

mera dancing
Originally uploaded by sammy baby

The carnival on the boardwalk lifted her brows, the Blizzard turned her head, the t-shirt shops were boring the games did not even merit so much as a moment of her attention. Mera's explanation to her sister Aeron on her return was simple, "The water was warm!" She danced in the rain like a sea nymph, reveling in the fresh warm water rinsing off the salt and sand, singing her own personal tune while Jersey and Pennsylvania natives huddled beneath their umbrellas. At our hosts' puzzled look, I shrugged, "We're from Seattle. If we let the rain slow us down, we would never do anything."

And then we ran hand in hand back into the tumbling waves, ducking under the big ones, bouncing over the small ones, and crashing through all the rest.