Dreamy

Every year that I've gone up and participated in Downeast Race Week, where I've been in amidst the landscape of shore and water and rock and island and current and sky that I love so much, I've entertained little daydreams about living up there.  How can I be here more? I always wonder.  So various scenarios present themselves to me and I try them on as fantasy lives.  I could run that convenience store, and live upstairs, maybe.  Or I could be a stern woman on a lobster boat.  Or maybe I'd be the only lawyer in town, and handle real estate transactions and OUIs and divorces.  When I am single, a substantial portion of the daydreams involve meeting Prince Charming, preferably on a boat, and summering at his family's summer place happily ever after.  There are variations on the theme: what if I fell overboard right here, and had to swim to that dock over there and get help, and the family fell in love with me, and the handsome son was there, and we were both smitten.....  The best are the combinations: I'm teaching sailing at the Tarratine Club, say, and running the Dark Harbor 20 series, and some Rothschild or duPont or Rockefeller or Cabot protests someone, and I'm the jury, and throw him out, and he sulks about it but one day over gin and tonics on some big summer porch we find ourselves laughing and a nice scripted chick lit ending happens. 

I've been doing this for  years whenever I go up to Penobscot Bay.  It's perhaps embarrassing to admit how much of my life, up there and everywhere else, involves playing out various daydreams and seeing how they feel.  Anyway, what was interesting about my daydreams this past week was that they always kind of stumbled, because as I would imagine the easy summer afternoons picking blueberries or cheerfully ringing up the customers at the bakery, I had to include a part where I got on the ferry on Tuesday afternoon, drove down to Portland, and jumped on my Etchells to sail in the Tuesday night series, then somehow made it back up to paradise.  It is a very awkward detail to include in the fantasy (although slightly easier if you daydream a helicopter or airplane pilot who is very supportive of my sailboat racing hobby). 

What it tells me is how very precious my real life is to me.  Especially the sailing I do, and the specific boat I do it on and the specific people I do it with, every Tuesday night.  I can't top it, even in my daydreams. 

Comments

[bill]

Oh Sherry, you know what they say -- one lawyer in a town starves; two lawyers in a town prosper.

[Carol Anne]

I have heard many people say that the defining characteristic of a prospective girlfriend or boyfriend is that the person accepts one's dog or cat. In your case, you need to find someone who accepts your boat. I'm sure the right person exists somewhere, but it might take some time for you and that person to find each other.

Meanwhile, keep on sailing that boat and have as much fun on it as you possibly can.

[Philip]

I used to think the same thing about my profession: sculptor. I think the defining thing is, be who you are. You'll be embraced for everything you are - boat included - by the right person.

But what's so hard about a boat? Why is it any different than say, you were a soccer player and had games every week? What am I missing?

[AdriftAtSea]

When you find the right person, you will know it. They will be the one who encourages your love of sailing, and does not fear it, even if they do not share it. Unconditional love is very much that way, wanting to help your partner succeed in their dreams, and doing everything you can to help them do so.

I drove 6500 miles and spent six months away from Gee because I never wanted her to regret not moving to Seattle.