The next five days should find me back living on Ava Chantel, a small sailboat on the central Oregon coast. New years is but a few days off and then the first weekend of a brand new year begins to unfold.  Exactly four weeks ago I buttoned Ava up. I was heading to surgery the next day and wanted her floating and relatively stink free by the time I got back, about ten days. I was glad I was thorough for it turned out to be four weeks. Not only could I not climb aboard her while using crutches, but storm after storm brought us over double the average December rainfall. 
Two days ago I shed the crutches and safety boot, carefully stretching my foot and leg. I still have a long way to go in the healing process, but it felt really nice to stand on two feet again. Exercising my new freedom I drove to the bay, then slowly walked (in shoes modified by the surgeon) the hundred yards or so to where Ava is mored. She looked just as I had left her, maybe a bit more mold here and there. I pulled her close and climbed aboard. Inside I had to smile. She was safe and dry. I must have found all the food so many weeks ago because there was just the familiar boat smell to greet me. I breathed deeply. 
Yesterday saw me back aboard checking systems, running the engine, thinking of what to do next. When will we sail again? The weather is clearing and now all thoughts are on fair winds and beautiful sunsets.

Just write. Tell the story.
Easy to say but not easy to do.

I’m snuggled on a couch, old dog snoring next to me as I rest a foot fresh from surgery. A small growth in the my arch and the breakup of my 32 year marriage has brought me to this point. I harbor in an old church converted to a home, not mine. A unique woman keeps me sane and safe while my mind flushes again and again trying to clear out so much debris.
In a little while it will be time to move back aboard, back on Ava. There is still unsettled business and many questions. I look forward to the time these aspects of my life are rendered powerless. I think about them constantly making it hard to focus on anything else.

It’s Christmas eve. Tomorrow it’s time to open presents, eat and drink too much. It’s a time to be with family. I’m missing mine terribly.
Why not be with them? They are ghosts to me. Quiet and in the background. My boys are young men with lives of their own. We hear from them rarely but I don’t blame them. Thinking back to when I was so young I was too much on fire about life to spend much time with my ‘old’ family. Girls, their family, new adventures were all I thought about. My sons are now me. I wish them well and love them very much. My daughter has distanced herself, a part of her Mom’s world and all the female that implies. My hopes for her are that sometime down the road she comes back to me, at least to ask a few questions. She is as strong as the boys, maybe stronger, and will do well.

Often we do what is needed to transition from one generation to the next, protecting each other long enough to be safely buried, all cares gone. Somewhere in that process a person may falter, stumble, even fall. We help that wayward soul back to the path if possible. If he fails we label him a deviant, shaking our heads in disbelief. 
Once in a great while someone breaks with this tradition, stepping outside the lines without the expected crash. They ask the question ‘why’? There are so many quotes from great men about the young ignoring the lure of societies expectations to become their own person, but that leaves me wondering about the rest of us.

I would ask, what about the older explorers? We started down the expected path, preformed as required (and wanted!). Our lives unfolded as needed and yet our unrest was always there for those looking for reasons. Late in life our stumble is explained away as so much latent childlike behavior. The idea of this mid-life crises is legendary, made fun of.
It’s real and those of us cursed/blessed with it are shaken to the core. We can not so much ignore it as we will try again and again to control it.

My life has been one of uneasy distraction that I think has culminated in my own crises, the one I’m living now. But that is for another time. I wish to write about recent events and why I am here reminiscing about Christmas on this Christmas Eve.
But I get ahead of the story, because even though recent events didn’t begin with her, I can safely say my midlife crises started with Ava Chantel.

I've always listened to things. I try to pick out patterns and exceptions that may give clues to trivial details. A truck climbing over the bridge brings transmission noises that traitor out a new driver or perhaps just a worn gear box.

I smile when the Coast Guard is busy. Their engines create a unique sound  pattern when they maneuver, it  echoes lazily up and down the bay pulsing slower then my heart. Close your eyes and focus, you might find it soothing.

I also listen to people. The sounds they make when talking can be delightful or painful. We sometimes think they aren't listening to us, but they are. They are hearing the sounds, the noise and cadence of our speech. This keeps them from hearing the words. They may decide not to listen when our speech stumbles out all jumbled like a band warming up, or blaring loud in fits and sputters, a child playing the trumpet.

Then there are the times when we hear emotions. We can tell a happy person from a sad one by how they talk. You're a good listener when you hear the emotion and the words at the same time.

I find anger and loathing easy. They strike out loud and obvious.
The painful side is that sometimes you can hear the agony. It is a dark and quiet sound that fills in the voids that injustice and betrayals create, torn open without thought or pity. 

Then in the smallest spaces, even between breaths, my mind wonders what sound of heart break, what sound the tortured soul?

I'm hoping not to offend anyone who has read this many times and knows this quote is very popular. I use it here to set the stage of a new year and a new life. 

"To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest.  Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea..."Cruising" it is called.  Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanders of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in.  If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change.  Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

”I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it!"  What these men can't afford is not to go.  They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security.  And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need -  really need?  A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment.  That's all - in the material sense, and we know it.  But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, and preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by.  The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience.  Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.  Where, then, lies the answer?  In choice.  Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?”

From Sterling Hayden's autobiography titled “Wanderer"