I don’t want to go home.
We spend a few days in a small village up a mangrove lined river. Our boat is moored free of charge to the community’s cement pier along with commercial diving catamarans and rickety old fishing boats and I wander the town carless and carefree. The houses are covered with tacky-looking tiles that are actually authentic 400 year-old relics. Maracuja ice cream with acai sauce is sold in 25 cent servings that are perfect samplers so unlike the gluttonous cones at home. I watch the kids doing double back flips off the pier into the river and I realize that, for me, time is suspended here. I remember being a child myself and when it was summer it was, just that, summer. It was not a holiday. It was a state. Like happiness. It was summer. Period. We lived on a beach and summer stretched as endlessly as the sand did. You could walk all day along the beach and never get to its end, there was always a point and beyond it another beach, and another and another. Summer had as many hours as the number of grains of sand. You could sit and lift up a handful of sand, peer closely at it and notice that each grain was a special sparkly mineral, and then let them spill slowly between your fingers like a velvet hour glass. And there were endless handfuls of sand, endless hours of summer, they both just stretched gloriously, boundlessly, on and on. And that is exactly what I have here in this lifestyle:the illusion of endless carefree time. And, more importantly, the PSG (perfect spiritual grace) that comes with it. I am feeling infused with a very childlike and innocent temporal suspension, as if lost in a different star-trek dimension where time doesn’t pass, and I like it. Today is today. Today we are here. I am living in the present and loving it. I consider joining the kids and doing backflips with them off the pier.
I don’t want to go home.
Eventually the weather forecast is favourable so we untie our stern, spring, and bow lines, motor back down the river, and head out to sea. We lift the sails and kill the motor and all about us the water is an unbelievable shade of turquoise and we fly across this all day heading out outout from land until there is nothing but the blue of the sky and the green of the sea and it is there again, the feeling of suspension from reality, we could sail all day and end up a hundred years ago, three hundred, more, we could meet Columbus coming in the other direction… there is nothing holding us here in the present, nothing holding us anywhere. After a full day of this almost orgasmic sailing a group of islands appears in front of us as if by chance and we sail up, drop anchor by a beach, and, obligingly, the sun starts to slowly set behind us, turning the water into a million sparkling diamonds allaround the palm topped isles. I lie in the cockpit waiting patiently for the golden hues of the sunset proper to start to fill the sky and notice flocks of frigate birds riding the thermals above the islands. They appear to glide effortlessly, barely moving. ‘What are they doing?’ HS asks. ‘Enjoying themselves.’ I answer. And it looks to be true. They are there, soaring, floating, hanging really, being supported merely by warm air and their own joy. Like me. I am so happy here, so totally devoid of responsibility or stress, I feel I could float up right off the cockpit cushions and join the frigates high in the air.
I don’t want to go home.
In the morning the wind has died down a bit so I don my mask and snorkel and swim in toward the nearest island. As I get closer to shore the pristine sand that we are anchored in is replaced by coral lumps and there are a gazillion fish. I swim along the shore for an hour or more gazing at the different groups. I pull out my little underwater camera and take a picture of one or two of them just for the record but for once, ironically (since it is only my underwater camera that I have left) I almost don’t want to take pictures, I just want to swim along,be a fish.I could grow gills, learn how to eat coral, stay here forever. Why not? Back on the boat breakfast is eggs and bacon and fresh watermelon (better, actually, upon reflection, than coral). Afterwards HS goes out to read in the cockpit and I sit in the salon, out of the sun, and write this, my journal, waiting to dry off completely before going back out to snorkel again. The sound system speakers are top quality and beautiful Saturday morning music is playing,KD Lang’s version of Hallelujah and other similar songs that wash right through you, cleansing your soul, making you sure of only one thing -you just want to stop time, right here, right now, suspend it, or bottle it up at very least and save it for later.
I don’t want to go home.
That’s not strictly true. I would love to go home for a week, visit with my kids, make sure they are happy and on track with good plans for the summer and the coming year. I would love to go home for a week, visit with my friends, stop in at the school even and pretend that I belong there. Then fly, free, back here. But that is all I want. No longer certainly. The thought of the six months ahead of me fills me with dread.
I don’t want to go home.
I feel like a toddler who has pulled in a deep breath prior to starting a tantrum. I want to rebel. I want to stay here. I realize that I am incredibly fortunate to have had this break, how many adults manage to take four months off and just go? But, but but… I am reminded of a past canoeing partner. He was fantastic. He paddled and portaged, set camp and cooked meals, and sang wonderful songs the whole time. We didn’t see many moose but we laughed a lot. He was a complete joy to be with. Until the last day. The last day he would always get up late. I would have to pack up the tent and gear, put together any meals, stuff the bags in the boat. The last day he would sit in the canoe silent, almost sullen, and I would do all the paddling by myself. He didn’t want to go home. He wanted to stay on the river, and, despite his usually cheerful demeanor he could just not,on the last day, manage to remain reasonable. I thought this ridiculousat the time, but here, now, I am worried I might start to exhibit similar behaviour if I don’t watch myself.
I don’t want to go home.
I want to stay here. Not on this boat. Not with this man. But with this lifestyle.With this freedom.With this total lack of rat-race pressure. Everyone here has made enough money to do them for the rest of their life, or, alternately, decided that they never will and so they might as well enjoy themselves instead. I fit, of course, into the second of those categories but that is just fine. I want to wake up and snorkel if we are by an island, go for a walk if we are by a town, cast off and set sail if we are finished with being where we are and the weather is good. Don’t get me wrong – I’m willing to work, willing to work hard. I’m willing to haul ropes, scrub decks, mend sails, cook and clean, I’m willing to work alternate three hours shifts round the clock hand-steeringon top of all that if necessary… I just don’t want to wake up and look out my own bedroom window at my lovely familiar pine trees and wish desperately that I were somewhere else. I want to be ‘somewhere else’. I want to be here. … The Saturday morning music is continuing and someone is crooning away; “I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be.”I don’t know who is singing these corny lyrics but they are obviously talking about being on a sailboat and are expressing my feelings exactly…
No. I don’t want to go home. At all.
I have decided that I will. I will go home and work hard at my job and harder at my marriage. I have decided to be committed to both.
