Postcard 021 - Sailing
I love sailing.
I've always loved water (as I've mentioned) and I enjoyed boats growing up, but I have to give credit to my father for introducing me to sailing. He decided to learn in a period where people usually attribute these kind of things to a "mid life crisis" — which, as an aside, I truly think is a terrible way of saying "I have enough financial stability and free time to worry about something besides my children" (or something similar 😉) — but for him I attributed it to curiosity more than anything else.
We'd lived in Kirkland for a few years and Lake Washington regularly had night races in the summer. On our family walks we'd see boats out in the lake and at some point (which I don't remember), he decided to take lessons.
After he got certified, we'd go out for hours, sometimes due to great winds, other times due to no wind. But being in the water was always calming. We'd work together as a unit, bring the equivalent of a picnic, and enjoy the beautiful Pacific Northwest views. I was fortunate that friends of mine also sailed, and more than that, taught sailing. It meant that after their lessons we could borrow the boats ourselves as we got older, having our own race series (we weren't fast) or night cruises.
When I see people on sailboats, I think about all those adventures — running barefoot on the deck, getting knocked around by the winds, and falling asleep in the cabin to the smooth rocking of the waves. Sometimes it gets me excited about the idea of a longer sailing adventure, before I'm brought back to reality by my fear of dark water. But most of the time, I just smile. I look out at a boat on a night like this one and think about how peaceful it must be to float through water that glitters like a night sky.