The Ladies Aid Society, circa 2005

Give them a little liquor and all hell breaks loose.

The Dinghy

This seems like so long ago -- but it was only two years ago this August. A trip west that was a last hurrah before Lillian began her first real job after graduating. Before she handed her life over to the big bullseye and worked a 40+ hour week. Paid vacation. 401K. Steady income. Experience.

She and I travelled to Seattle and rendezvoused with friends -- my friends, actually. But people who knew her when she was just a wee little one. Complete with squishy diapers, chubby baby flesh and tears of woe. People who had seen her move from a small fish-lipped toddler to a confident, commanding Irish-Norwegian-Minnesotan-full-blown-woman.

We were ready to hang out for a long weekend north of Seattle, safe within the harbor of the Nanaimo, piloted by our faithful and steady Captain Westin. We would hand her over to The Man the Tuesday after Labor Day.














It was a weekend filled with fresh ocean-fueled air, hikes on outer islands through forests filled with fauna we couldn't name and hours of just hanging out. A few cases of Two Buck Chuck. Which actually was Three Buck Chuck. But, who's counting after you've successfully managed Two Before One.

We feasted on hand picked oysters, compliments of Lady Di and cooked to perfection by our steady Noel. We witnessed dolphins riding the waves beside the boat, whales breaching just beyond the shipping channels and anemone lit by some kind of oceanic peptide.

But really, the highlight of the weekend was the dinghy.














We were anchored at a harbor on a small island, somewhere in the northern reaches of Puget Sound. We decided to go to dinner at a restaurant on the other side of the harbor -- a few miles by car. A short distance by dinghy. Even though we'd have to transport in two trips, we chose the water route. Seemed a bit more direct and a bit more dangerous.

We loaded ourselves into the dinghy - cradled one behind another, arms circling bodies, tightly compacted -- compromising all rules of the water. We were riding high on the thrill. We were riding low in the water. Literally.



































Mark made two trips - the latter one bringing Noel and Lady Di into the fold. The air was late summer -- the last moments of the season folded gracefully, langourously into the next. We drank, dined and tried to hang on to whatever this feeling was: childhood memories mixed with parental knowledge, fueled by this sensory overload of all that is Puget Sound -- a magical place for a girl from the Midwest -- a feeling that was, looking back, probably restricted to me.

Once more, transfering a child into the world. Nothing monumental, really -- I'd been here before. But, again, monumental, all the same. The delicious and distressing dichotomy of having children.

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After transporting his companions to and from the evening meal on this late-summer evening, Captain Westin attempts to get the motor running on the dinghy. His friends abandoned him, choosing to navigate the way home by land -- he was left to his own devices, floating in the space between twilight and evening, unaware of the difference.