Random Acts of Mothering

This evening we took one of our ritual sunset dinghy rides in the creek where we do that geeky thing we love to do... we play guess the boat. Especially when we see a catamaran we don't recognize anchored out, we blurt out guesses as to make and model and country of origin and then we idle up next to said vessel to find out. We were both wrong in this case (I said Privilege and D said something South African, it was a Kennex for you fellow boat geeks).

But we got an invite to come aboard and had a lovely sunset chat complete with watermelon, cookies, and wine. J is a retied teacher and an intrepid single hander as her husband is ill and cannot be with her on the boat. With my mama long gone and my step-mom so far away, it was such a warm feeling to sit with a woman of my mom's generation on this Mother's Day evening and hear her tales. It was the far away look in her sea blue eyes, it was the scar across her nose from solo sailing some guests on the boat this weekend and getting lashed by the jib sheet, it was the lines on her hands and face from a life well lived, it was her strong opinions so freely stated. We talked of home schooling and engine repair and the mating patterns of the local osprey. And all the while Z scrambled happily up and down her decks, noting aloud every difference or similarity to our own catamaran and chowing down on the snacks laid out in the cockpit.

How lucky we are to not only have our built in community at the marina, but to be able to dinghy out at random for a sunset cruise and find an instant connection with a complete stranger. Mother figures, mother wisdom, mother warmth comes in all forms throughout ones life. And on this Mother's Day a complete stranger opened her boat to us simply because we share the common love for Mother Ocean. (I promise not to break into song or quote Jimmy Buffett) Without even knowing it, she filled that mommy shaped hole in my heart for one sweet evening.