Recently I was thinking about relationships and boats. Never mind the circumstances, It probably had something to do Oprah, or a hallmark card across the isle from the ice-cream cooler at the pharmacy, with its sentimental proclamations of ships passing in the night; or was I drowning in a see of interpersonal catharsis... never mind the circumstances, I was thinking about boats and relationships as I looked out the window at White Head passage, where Holly and I spend summer afternoons paddling our kayaks to remote sand spits where the beach glass hunting is superb. We have our style of navigation, which to anyone who knows us, is symbolic of our relationship-me drifting and tacking out into the passage, and Holly, steadfastly lateral to the shore. We have our eyes on each other, and somehow, despite my superior speed, Holly always reached to the sand spit yards ahead of me. We tried a tandem kayak once, in Tomales Bay. Inside of ten minutes we had traded it in for two individual kayaks.
That was our first time on the water, 4 years ago. A group of us were cutting across the mile wide stretch to the peninsula where we would eventually camp. After a half hour I got my sea-legs. In a sudden burst if energy I sprinted away from Holly in a childish demonstration of the unsupressable male urge to go fast. "I knew you couldn't just take it easy." Holly said as I paddled furiously towards the Big Yellow tandem kayak a hundred yards ahead of us. I could see it was Jeff and Leslie meandering around in the middle of the bay. They saw me coming, and I imagined the awe and envy they must have felt as I bore down upon them in my quick little one-person craft. They were probably wishing hey had chosen independence over the that yellow barge they were sewn into like two baby kangaroos on their floating, prostate mother. I could see them watching me over their shoulders, I could see the big straw hat, that old lady's gardening hat that was probably handed down from Leslie's Great-great grandmother. At first that hat was all I could really see, perched over the back of the Kayak. The back; the power position, what chance did they have in that floating albatross with Great-great Grandma Leslie at the helm, against me, the un-tethered speed demon of Tomales bay. I was going to show them what independence could achieve, a little reminder of what they maybe hadn't considered when they took their marriage vows.
And bear down on them I did. Inside of 3 minute I had closed the gap to where I could practically grab that ridiculous straw had and hold it up to catch the wind to tow me effortlessly beyond their bow. I was close enough to hear them, and they, no doubt, could hear my deep staccato breathing as I chugged vehemently toward them like a steam engine, full throttle. They, no doubt, could hear me, and I could hear them, giggling to each other. The straw hat turned once more to reveal, not Great-great Grandma Leslie, but Jeff, all two-hundred and I-don't-want-to-know-how-many pounds of paddling power. He said something to Leslie, like "that way" and she snickered, and they were a hundred yards away from me within seconds in a line so straight that two surveyors who happened to be on the peninsula were able to calibrate their equipment by Jeff and Leslie's trajectory. "Was that Jeff and Leslie?" I heard Holly ask, who was only a few inches behind me after all. "Look at how well they can steer their Kayak."
Why relationships are likened to the ambling sports I'll never know. While old lovey-dovey songs wax nostalgic over bicycles built for two, I'm glad I've never witnessed Jeff and Leslie's prowess over their own two wheeled vacation-cycle. I don't think I could stand the comparison I would inevitably conjure up when I think of what would happen if Holly and I tried to maneuver a tandem bike together. We wouldn't survive it, and don't know many other couples who could make it safely around the block, heaped as one, atop a spindly metal frame, wobbling and lurching, a Three-stooges-like dynamo careening toward eminent collision at the first crack in the pavement. Then there is Jeff and Leslie passing SUVs on Route One in Morro Bay, Jeff in the back with his Great-great Grandmother's straw gardening hat, and Leslie in the front watching the body language of the drivers ahead of them, anticipating what they might do before they edge up beside them.
Recently, Holly and I found two pieces of beach glass, well worn and obviously very weathered, that fit together like two puzzle pieces. In the world of beach glass this is as rare a find as there is. I think we'll put then in a box and send them to Jeff and Leslie.