Dreams can be real, even with a wife creature

I am home..as in stick house…for less than 24 hours.

The reason we are home is because we are indulgent parents who cater to our children. There is a big 13th birthday party for one of Cory’s classmates, and the whole world will be there (at least all the boys from his class) so to avoid permanently ruining our sons social life, we drove home to allow him to attend the party of the century.

In addition to this, there is a plethera of crap I have to attend to…I will not bore you with details of lawn mowing and bill paying.

When we started to pull into the driveway, Mia burst out crying and has been sobbing ever since. She wants to go back to the Little House. The boys too. Me, I am somewhere in between right now. I really love this damn old house, but I love the simplicity of our life at the coast. I guess this summer will give light to some of the things I have been pondering over the last 1 1/2 years. Do I want to continue to dig in roots where we are, or try something new?

In addition to feeling excitement about the boat and our summer plans, I am also feeling incredibly stressed. We are not rich people. At all. One of the biggest questions that people ask me via e-mail is “How do you afford it?”. I have answered before in this post, but I have to tell you, the boat is a whole different story. We are fairly free of debt. We have an unbelievably low house note. Our taxes are less than $2200 a year. The cost of living is very low where we live.

But damn, the boat note, insurance for it and slip fee are going to really take a huge bite out, and I am trying hard to reconcile myself to that fact. Well, you might ask, why buy the boat and get yoursefl strapped? If you want to really know what it is about, well, I will tell you.

My whole life, all my father talked about was having a sailboat. He loved sailing, having sailed a bit in the Great Lakes, and raced a bit in Wisconsin, and was quite the adventurer as a young man. When he was in his early 20′s, he took a canoe down the Mississippi river from its beginning in Minnesota to where it ends in the Gulf of Mexico.

But the sailing. Oh, he really wanted it. On the weekends, as far back as I can remember, he would take us to lakes to look at sailboats. Every weekend. My mom hated it. She bitched and moaned every time she went with us, and in the end, after years and years of squabbling over it, told him there was no way she would let him buy a boat. I am still pissed at her about this. My father died having never fullfilled this dream.

When I married Bill in 1990, he was a sailing maniac. I got caught up in it purely by default. He loved it, so I got involved. We ended up selling the little 24 foot boat that we had, and bought the 30 foot blue water cruising sail boat, Mystic. Mystic was a boat that we could live on and sail around the carribean for a year. My father LOVED the idea and encouraged us with all of his heart.

One of the last really good memories I have of my father before he got cancer, was taking him out on Mystic for a sail around Galveston Bay. Bill let Dad have the helm, while he and I trimmed sails. My father just glowed. Afterwards we took him to eat boiled crab, and I don’t think he stopped smiling all night long. God, I loved him. Just remembering that has me in tears.

You know what I will not become? I will not become a wife who squashes the dreams of her husband. I want to be the kind of wife who helps him make his dreams come true. I want Bill to live life to the fullest, never taking anything for granted.

I want to be an encourager, not a discourager.

We talked about this. We talked about my financial worries. We talked about safety and having good common sense in regards to having children aboard.

In my heart, I know that Bill is just like my father. A quiet dreamer, who shares his deepest desires with great difficulty. He is a wonderful provider for myself and the kids, takes responsibility to a whole new meaning, and is one of two men with whom I always knew I could trust with anything….the other being my father. He rarely asks for anything, but boy when he does, it is usally whopper.

So, I shake off the memory of my mother and her inability to relinquish control. Control that she still feels the need to throw around. I look back at the last 15-20 years she had with my father, and I know that she is riddled with guilt and regret.

I will not allow for regret.

Instead of squashing my husbands dreams, I have decided to join him in them.

Here are some more pics of the boat…..