Boat Ride
Last year for my 50th birthday, my husband Jim took the day off work. We’d spend it together, he said. Maybe we’d drive to the beach and go for a walk.
He offered to take me out for breakfast. I asked if it could be to someplace near the water. He said he’d do some research and find just the place.
A few hours later, we took off in the car and ended up in a parking lot in a nearby condo complex. I was a little confused, but then quickly thought maybe there was a little cafe Jim had discovered that I had never heard of, perhaps mostly just for the condo residents.
Jim was checking his phone as if to find the exact spot recommended on a yelp review. I followed and together we walked through a gate to a floating dock.
I looked for the little coffee shop I had already seen in my mind, tucked away on the water. At the end of the dock, he turned around and I figured he had made a wrong turn.
Instead, he gave me a big grin as if he was exactly where he most wanted to be.
My stomach flipped. It was obvious to me then. Clearly, he had rented a boat for the morning and was going to take me out for breakfast on the bay. I looked around for a captain, confused when I saw no one. Maybe, I told myself, he had rented it for a few hours and was going to drive the boat himself. How romantic! He knew a morning with him on the Bay is what I would love most of all.
And then he said, “It’s yours.”
I was very confused. “What?” I asked several times, getting no answer from his big smile.
I had no idea what he was trying to say.
“It’s yours, really yours,” he said.
This sweet man had gotten me a small motorboat, something I had wanted ever since I was a little girl but had never even considered possible. We didn’t even live on the water. How could this be?
I’ll never forget that first boat ride, taking off quietly from the rented boat slip, driving past houses with their own docks, out onto the San Francisco Bay. Being with him on the water was like returning home.
This past Saturday was my birthday again. 51–not quite as exciting or quite as big of a milestone as the big 5-0. But I knew exactly how I wanted to spend it.
We were blessed by a still calm bay, no winds, and the kids joining us too. Jim had again researched exactly what to do. Our first stop was Angel Island. We tied the little boat up, paid a docking fee to the park rangers and climbed aboard to sit on the beach before the ferries arrived.
Next, we took off around the tip of the peninsula. The bay was so still, we were able to travel farther than we ever had, navigating the freeway bridge to head up a narrow creek, just the way I had when we had first moved here 14 years ago and I rowed on the adult novice crew team. It was a day of returning, and a day of firsts.
On our way back, we tied up to a restaurant’s dock, another first for us. A waiter served us as we balanced our plates on our laps, the perfect option for a pandemic dining experience.
Finally, we turned toward home, eager to get back before the afternoon winds turned.
Sunday morning, we woke up before dawn, buoyed by our success the day before, determined to venture even further, expecting to be rewarded for our early wake-up by even stiller seas. As we stepped onto the boat, however, we noticed a slight breeze lapping on the water, hinting at a very different kind of day on the bay. By the time we made it out of the protected cove, the fog was blowing in through the Golden Gate Bridge, the water filled with whitecaps.
We wrapped ourselves in extra sweatshirts as sea lions and dolphins popped up their heads as if curious as to why we were in the only boat on the water.
By the time we reached the Racoon Straits, we couldn’t even see Angel Island because the fog was so thick. We decided to abort our plan, turn around and have breakfast and hot cocoa in our own warm home.
In the time between birthdays, I can’t believe how much has changed. Besides the world crises and pandemic, I have also started to feel more like myself. There are a lot of reasons why this has happened. Having more free time with my family as a result of sheltering in place has played a big part. But I think Jim’s gift of returning me to the water also had a way of waking me up, making me remember who I really am.
Reconnecting with our true selves doesn’t require anything glamorous like a perfect birthday gift. It’s more about remembering, centering and figuring out our own way of anchoring within ourselves.
When we reconnect with who we really are through our hobbies or habits–however that happens for each of us–I think life works better. We stop striving for bigger and better and start feeling as if we have everything we need.
For me, it doesn’t just happen on the water. It also happens each morning around 5 a.m., when I wake up in the silent house, pick up my pen and a clean stack of papers and sit down to write. It happens when I lay in the sunlight pouring through a window (especially after multiple days of fog or smoke) and feel the warmth against my skin.
It definitely happens when I play with our puppy and she makes me laugh, even when she barks too much. It happens when I listen to our kids, laughing at their jokes, trying my hardest to see things from their point-of-view and enjoy them exactly the way they are.
It happens when I wiggle my toes in sand, walk barefoot outside on a warm night, or look at photos of moments in the past that brought me joy.
It happens when I tune my violin, wipe off rosin from the wood after practicing, and when I’m sitting outside with Jim, listening to what he’s thinking and dreaming about.
It happens when I blast music, letting it reverberate through our home, sometimes classical, sometimes country, reggae, rock or pop. When the music matches my mood, it’s kismet, as if the songwriter knows exactly what I’m feeling.
We rarely get to choose how things will go. Some days are up, some are down. Some are dark and brooding, some calm and still.
So much is beyond our control, from the wind, to politics, to weather, but it is in those moments when we connect with our truest self, the person we were born to be, and remember that is the person we still are, that it can feel like everything really is alright.
Most days, I forget all this. It took getting the best gift of my life to remember.
