Just a wish

For many years as I drove over southern Massachusetts as a real estate appraiser, I'd cross over a meandering river. The dichotomy of that peaceful scene with the rush of traffic on Route 3 made me promise myself that someday I’d be on the water instead of the road.

Fast forward through many months and years of life moving on, still making that vague promise, to a phone call from my sister. She’d bought a kayak. Hmmmm…maybe that would work where the canoe didn’t.

My husband had bought me a canoe for Christmas to replace the old one destroyed in a winter storm. (note to self….do not store a fiberglass canoe under the following conditions:
Hanging on supports
Beneath the steeply sloped roof of a garage
In New England
During the winter.
In a record snowfall year.)

Like many fantasies realized (if we had a canoe, we’d camp more, we’d take long adventures blahblahblah), reality sticks in it’s ugly head and shows you why you should evaluate your personality.

Our first time out with our beautiful, 17 foot Pensobscot canoe (that I’d begged for) we couldn’t work out our strokes, we couldn’t resolve who should steer on which side, we nearly flipped over said canoe and as husband can’t swim hysterical wife retreated further into crazy behavior. We hadn’t checked the weather and its was extremely windy making the return of the “we’re never doing that again” canoe to the roof another lesson in personality differences in a marriage. OK, no canoe.

But a kayak! One person. No arguments. Off to NH!