The boat was on a mooring. I rowed out to it, cast off, and pulled up the sails.
This was the first time I had done this by myself, and I nearly capsized. I scrambled over to the port side, and nearly capsized the other way. On an even keel, with the sails pulling, I found myself sailing towards the rocks- so I went about, turning just before I hit them, and felt the most glorious adrenalin surge.
With my father, I lay in the boat, in the sun, with almost no swell on the loch. Just after lunch, I looked over the side, and saw two jellyfish. Their crowns were separate, their tentacles intertwined, floating horizontally together, and they were beautiful. Then we drifted home mostly on the tide.
These photographs were taken just before Dad moved to Linlithgow, and two taken at the same time hang in my father’s bedroom. I resent all those photographs of his wife’s descendants, littering the living room, and not one of me. Then he has photographs of me presenting male- What?
And 
yet
it
is
a
beautiful
memory
Clare Flourish 
Beautiful memory, beautiful pictures. Beautiful boy, beautiful girl. We are more, much more than the sum of our parts.
The sun is shining here, a beautiful day for a sail. Have a good time today.
XXXX :-)) ♥
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There is so much wisdom-bollocks about. Live in the present, not in the past. Well, of course, but how? For me, I need to come to terms with the past, by seeking out the joy in it.
Today it is grey, but yesterday there was beautiful sunshine. I lunched in the back yard, in a sleeveless top for the sun on my skin.
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How does one live in the present? Well…by breathing, I suppose, and thinking about only that. It’s a start, anyway.
XXX 🙂
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Don’t forget Clare, the past is beyond our control and although it can be beautiful, it can be resentful, it can ignite resentment … it is still the past 🙂
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It ignites a lot of resentment in me. My resentment is in my present.
It seems to me a lot like fixing a septic tank where the soakaway has got clogged. Some digging is required but the end result, I hope, is fertilised rather than poisoned soil.
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I hope the result for you is in fertilisation too Clare – there’s that saying “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” – but that’s a saying and often like a lottery with us I think. Digging into the past can be very painful, especially if digging at thinks that are/were unpleasant, the trick is I think knowing where to place that “refuse” once we dig it out, how far and whether one can hurl it away, if not then we need to make it fit somehow…oh, I do wish you well.
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