Can one be a sassea sailor if they don’t sail? If one has a sassy, flirty, throw caution to the wind attitude but they no longer put out to sea can they be Sassea? They say the happiest day in a boater’s life is the day they buy or the day they sell their boat. Well, hogwash, I say. Even if I am not washing a hog, can what I just did be watered away like the dirt off a pig? What did I do? I put my life up for sale? All my fondest memories, my most adventurous days, and my most bittersweet remembrances are all packed on that cold molded wood epoxy Marples 35 tri.

Certainly these are not tears of joy that slide down my cheeks. Each drop is a salient reminder of the last line in a poem. It was adapted by dear friend of my late husband which he discreetly bundled into my hand when we embraced at Danny’s memorial service. Every day since the words silently thunder in my mind. “When the mighty Dan goes to sea no more. . . ” No more, no more, no more I have cried for the past five years. The house was sold, the car sold, and now, my ticket to freedom, my 35 foot tri is on her way to still waters perhaps to foreign shores.

More symbolically of hanging the for sale sign on her starboard bow is the fervor in which I was once determined to sail around the globe. To let the stormy seas abate my fears, to have no man board my soul, to be a modern day Tom Sawyerette. Oh, how I believed I could do more than I did. The shadow of darkness that stabbed my heart each and every night while alone yet feeling safe in the port side bunk, was too much to bear.

No,  not the super woman who steps away from the crowd. My fear of being just an average Joe (ette) has reared its ugly head. For the first time in my life, I am sailing into the world of couplery. True to myself there is always an unconventional component. In this case the role I play aboard the land locked coupleship is that of an unwed wife.

In the back of my mind the dream, the plan, the reality is I will sail again; alone on my quest to continue where I ran from my fear.