True Happiness

Many people search for true happiness all their lives. They’re lucky to find it, even on someone else’s face. It’s so rare — a true apparition.

- B.B. Sanders

 

 

I am one of the lucky few to see such a ghost. I found it in an unlikely place, far removed from any comfort or sense of ease. Instead, it came with my father atop cresting waves of muddy waters.

As the wind blew sideways, white capping water frosted with freezing rain, lesser men would have turned back. Yet, as dutiful worshippers of the most ancient religion, we sacrificed ourselves again as his boat slid off the trailer.

“Slicker suit?” Dad asked me.

An absurd ritual that required observance. I had once encapsulated myself in those olive-drab sweatboxes when I was about 4 feet tall. It never happened again after the smell of old rubber pulled the sweat from my skin. It was so hot that it left me more uncomfortable and wet than if I had just endured God’s appointment for the day.

“Hard pass,” Dad chuckled. He never wore them, either. I don’t know why he even kept the darn things.

The outboard performed its morning sonata. A double chirp followed by a mighty low roar filled the air as it came to life. As we idled to the boat run, I pulled my hat over my eyes. The gentle frozen raindrops would soon morph into bullets.

The emotion of the morning never changes. The feeling of the nose of the boat rising. The old Mercury trumpeting its power across the known world in a scream. Its rage kept only under slight control on the back of the fiberglass hull.

I loved it. I still love it.

In moments, we planed out. Only the foot of the motor and the center of the keel glancing over the water. The whitecaps bared their chest as we pierced them at reckless speeds.