Boats

There are certain summer traditions we refuse to let go, even when life gets in the way.

I will never not wear sandals in warm weather… regardless of rain, broken (or missing) toenails, or other ailments that typically require closed-toed shoes. Summer is for sandals. Flip, flop.

My uncle will never not have his boat in the water. Even at eighty (and after triple bi-pass surgery). And the only we can feel decent about him scooting around the ocean in a speedboat is to help him do the physical labor of putting it in the water. (Of course, if we didn’t, he’d do it himself.)

So today we went drove down the Cape, offered support to my uncle (who still did much of the work himself), got the boat in the water, and had a barbeque filled with chicken and corn and stories from my uncle’s days in the Navy.

And the whole time I thought about France. And I thought about Tony, on his own high-seas adventures. And I wished I was traveling the world in a boat.

Jack Sparrow was right. “But what ship really is…is freedom.”

And that’s what I’m really after.