Summer Solstice on the Bay
When we arrived at Crisfield yesterday, I knew that it had been too long since I'd been on the water. I timidly boarded the workboat! As soon as the boat left dock, I realized this would be a special trip. Riding on the Bay, looking at "Captain Bob," I recalled the ex's old wish of becoming a captain. In my head I said, "Go and do what will make you happy. Get your captain's license." In so many ways, I wish I could say that to him . . .

Fox Island welcomes and beckons you to enter, to stay. Purely magical, quiet, beautiful -- it's the sort of place someone would pay several hundred dollars a night just to stay. The boat tied up to the mooring and, rather than take the skiff, some of us waded to the lodge. I trudged through the muddy, grassy bottom and could not get there quickly enough.


Later, on the Jenny S, we "scraped" the Bay floor to see the creatures. We handled crabs and caught fish for our "MTv" (marine television). The crowning glory of the spoils from the scraping - a pufferfish. Well, it's really a horned something or other, but it looks like a puffer . . . and the rather large summer flounder was also a prize. The awesome experience on the water kept me thinking about the watermen, who dared to live symbiotically with this great bay.

On the way to Smith Island, this morning, I thought deeply. I thought about how my marriage could have been different. All the Eastern Shore type things -- boats, crab pots, watermen, food -- reminded me of Chestertown and Rock Hall and his family. Thinking about him could not be helped. I wondered if he were a waterman, would we have lasted? I thought about how that seemed to be his calling - the water. (He's even an Aquarius.)

We explored the Island -- so small, so remote, so different. I admired how the children could run freely and considered life here for my own children. We visited the Methodist Church. I almost cried. But, I seem to be on the verge of tears so often lately that it didn't surprise me. We talked with locals about family living, visited the crab co-op, and heard some good yarns. We bent to the B&B, The Inn of Silent Music, and spoke with the proprietor about what it must be like to be a "foreigner" and why he and his wife were leaving . . .

Wow! Wouldn't that b e a great thing to do -- run a B&B -- and he only wants 425K for the business.

So, putting together the idea of the ex's Eastern Shore roots and raising my children on Smith Island, I considered whether a simple life in a remote place would have worked for us. The entire boat ride back I thought about it all . . . the Methodists and the temperance and the watermen -- and those women behind it all. Was it greed or desire that led my marriage to the rocks?

What would happen if the money of Naptown could be removed, if we could ever be simple, if we could have been happy? For a brief moment, I thought about trying again. We just need to do things differently -- away from material wealth and alcohol . . .

Always, we dreamed. We dreamt BIG. "Dropping-out" showed up on the agenda on day one. I planned to quit grad school and go to the Caribbean with him on his Pearson 28. My bedside table reading included books on sailing and how to live the "cruising lifestyle." Cooking on an alcohol stove and how to stow and pack in a small space - my type of challenge!

Somewhere along the line, marriage and kids threw off the escape plans. Still, though, I maintained a folder on "Costa Rica" and read websites about home schooling at sea. We subscribed to ex-pat magazines and continued to dream BIG. The dreaming, however, was not enough. Now that I think of it, we crawled to the edge of a beautiful canyon and peered about, but we were to chicken to hike to the valley and too weak to make the trip.

The dreaming, always there, kept us from seeing where we were. Our daily lives were not enjoyable - we were too busy dreaming. I guess that's why I have been so attracted to the Buddhist idea of "being present." I lived in the future, not where I was. NOW, I'm living in the past, wondering "what could have been."

I realized it, and thought about this quote:

The past cannot be redone but the future can be done better.

Then I looked at the spray off the bow of the boat. The water looked like silver strings of thread galling away into the water. It was magic, and there I was again, in the present.