The Chistmas Sail

The Christmas Sail

He was always the only one on the dock regardless of how nice the weather. Turkeys and televisions he mused. This year it was a slate gray sky bringing a damp southerly breeze across the lake, assuring a broad reach back to the dock later in the afternoon. Perfect he thought.

"Watch the waves, they never lie. See how it's darker over there. That's a puff and it'll be here in about a minute."

The jib hanks were stiff from sitting idle in the bow for almost two months. Looking down the dock he could see that most of the other boats had been stripped clean to their skeletons. This time of year was only for the purist or idiots as she had told him as he walked out the door shortly after the presents had been opened this morning. He had thought about trying to explain this to her but reconsidered as they were interrupted by her sister's phone call.

"Don't look up, feel the wind on your face. Look at how the yarn on the shrouds stream."

Some years he had scraped frost from the windows of the old truck but today the spray bottle mist falling from the sky had needed just a nudge with the wipers as he backed out of the driveway. Mike, their lab mix stood in the window not understanding why he wasn't invited. He knew his worn out Hinckley ball cap and foul weather jacket meant the boat and would run to the door. Avoiding the dog's eyes like the father sneaking out to get ice cream after the kids were in bed, he considered taking him for a minute and breaking with the tradition. It had always been solo, for how many years? The cancer had progressed so fast. He remembered how by the time the chemo was started the old man was too weak to walk down the docks.

"Don't wait till you've already been headed, tack before the puff hits you. That's it, now ease the sheet and let it accelerate. Now, now sheet it in, feel the boat, let it pick up speed."

The wind had stiffened and clocked towards the north forcing him to absorb the icy blast on his cheeks. The main fluttered as he let the boat head up. There was no race today, no other boats for that matter. No reason to bury the rail. The old man never did like him taxing the equipment. "Reef early, reef often." He'd bark.

"The boat is always faster when it's flat."

He reminisced about that first summer he'd let him take the Lightning out by himself. How much faster it was without the old sailor's bulk back there on the tiller. He criss crossed the lake till dusk.
He had wanted to teach his own son how to sail but the kids had video games and lived with their mother in Texas. Always a reason, always an excuse.
The cancer had him bedridden by that Thanksgiving, but the doctors said he'd be with them at least till spring. Maybe the drugs would slow it down so they could go out one last time he remembered praying.
Letting the sails belly out onto the broad reach, the winds calmed. He felt the sting in his face and the tears in his eyes from the bite of winter. Just one more sail was all he'd wanted. To give the old man the wheel, let him feel the rudder guide the hull laser straight to the buoy they had always used as their imaginary weather mark.

The breeze calmed in the protected shallows of the back of the channel like the ebbing measures of a sonata. Life's sonata.
Sails stowed, the pop-ity pop of the diesel driving them back to the dock he felt his hand on his shoulder.

"Not too fast, but remember you have to keep steerage with this wind or you'll put us into the Anderson's Morris."

The sloop came to a stop back at the dock perfectly in it's slip even though the wind should have blown it away. He laughed, just like the first year he'd gone for his single handed Christmas Day sail. No one would believe him if he'd told how every year it was as if there was someone holding the boat steady against the planks until the lines were secured.
He stood looking at the dull gray sky past the sea of swaying masts.
No one should die on Christmas.
Even though it had been way more than twenty years ago he could still see his weathered face as they drug the sails back to the loft in the clubhouse for their last sail together.

Merry Christmas Dad.